If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Its 2:25 am and my 7 month old daughter decided that its a good time to practice her vowels… Thankfully she is not crying at all, but for some reason she has no interest in sleeping. So I’m standing here looking around the Internet for something interesting… I found this amazing article about Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov a Soviet colonel who basically changed the world as we know it without our knowledge. Although I doubt any of us will have a chance like the one he did to make such a monumental call on behalf of society, we all in our own way have a call to make only instead of a nuclear war being at stake its the quality of life for us and our children.

It’s almost as though the war that Stanislav helped advert placed a sort of complacent cloud over us as a country. I would never wish a war or mass death on anyone but something very distinct is defining our generation in America. The absence of struggle for our basic needs keeps us in a place where we are complacent; we no longer have to strive for anything in life and in turn care less and less about what our world looks like. I had a conversation with Micah as we ate lunch at the Bread Store yesterday about how intense times bring out a sort of accuracy and awareness within us. It’s almost as though we are woken up from a sleep we never knew we were in, when things get hard or challenge us.

I think that each of us has a chance to make a difference. To be the one that woke up and said I’m going to do something about all this. Just like the many who showed up at the National Park(ing) Day yesterday to say that we are not just going to stand by silent as so much land is devoted to parking cars. Not that sitting in lawn chairs on pieces of sod as cars passed on J St is going to make a difference in itself, but its a start. Everything has to have a start. Rosa Parks didn’t have to get 50,000 signatures on a petition to start a revolution she just had to sit down and make a statement.

I spoke with a friend the other day who told me jokingly that he stopped reading our blog because it was challenging him. Although he was being sarcastic I think he is right that it’s uncomfortable to think about doing something or to even notice that something needs to be done. Complacency runs deep and is often one of the hardest things to fight against.

So when the world is telling you that this is the way things have to be, stand up, or sit down, ignore protocol do whatever it takes to be the small catalyst that stopped a war or started a revolution. I can tell you one thing I have learned in the last year is that there are plenty more people out there just like you and the more of us there are the easier this will be to get started. I read a study that said the biggest changes in society start with less than 1% of the population. We are way past 1% and have good reason to get together and make our cities into great places for people to thrive.

This is what LJ Urban is doing every day. We are fighting against the world that says that people wont buy houses in neighborhoods that aren’t new, or that no one wants a sustainable home. We are choosing to make a stand and build a better house in neighborhoods that deserve a second chance. But we realize that we are only part of the picture. What these houses need is revolutionaries to live in them and make a difference in the world around them or simply people who tune in to the discussion even if they will never live in one of our houses. We don’t want to talk about us, we don’t want to scream at cars from a billboard about how our houses are better than the other guys. Instead we want to get everyone thinking about what they can do. Our homes represent a small part of the bigger picture. The real bigger picture is you and what you are going to start doing tomorrow to make the world a better place.

Alright… it’s now 3:10 and the baby is sound asleep. I better lay her down and try and get some sleep myself.

Levi