When I was little, my Dad bought our first real sports car; and, while I am not a car person – at all – because it meant so much to a person I loved, I still can’t help but feel reminded of life then anytime I see an almost impossibly bright red reflection on iridescent lacquer on a summer day.

I have given a great deal of thought lately to people who, whether close family members or virtual strangers to me, have offered moments and symbols of their dedication to what inspires them – many times in meaningful ways. Regardless of whether these are well-known, or mentors I’ve had the privilege of knowing only briefly, sometimes all I need to do is to remember them to feel encouraged.

Frequently, I still think about two teachers in particular I knew as a very young child whose fidelity to purpose and undeniable enthusiasm about our very existence as preschoolers help prove to me today what the world gains every time a person finds her calling. What a world of difference it makes to be able to commune with people who recognize me and whom I recognize, and what a feeling of being home, and being companioned, I regain every time.

In light of the theme of this blog and what I believe is a need to encourage and amplify such difference-making through the design of communications matrices that hinder it less, I believe it important to note that, to have an effect, the hearts who propagate it don’t need to frighten or terrorize for attention but, rather, illumine and guide. Almost always, it seems like these examples themselves are lit from within.

Recently, I’ve felt so much gratitude for people who, today, broach topics like gender-based abuse, or, how it feels to challenge corporate media, as such topics are still so fraught. But, by articulating the plights of the isolated and marginalized, these contributors are not simply fellow travellers, but roadbuilders, I believe, who make room for others by implementing an understanding that, in our transportation system for ideas, we can tolerate no walled-off cul de sacs.

In the renovation of our communications infrastructure, I still believe there is not nearly so much of a need to hold individual journalists, much less their entire profession, accountable, but, rather, the business model within which journalists are working today and, with compassion, those who perpetuate it even now. But it still feels worth articulating that theirs are arguably not minor crimes against the world.

Each time an independent journalist or other public affairs commentator who has, in the past, offered the world such helpful scaffolding – saying just the right thing at just the right time – seems to falter for the stress that still seems to come with traveling alone by forming an unhelpful partnership or otherwise parking on the roadside by changing focus to a less challenging topic, I wonder, why couldn’t they hold on a bit longer?

Maybe it will just take more of us.