The Other Wes Moore

The Other Wes Moore is book about two young men who share the same name, come from the same low-income neighborhood, who are both raised by single mothers, whose lives have so many similarities, but whose outcomes are polar opposites. I had to pick it up and will gladly pass it along to anyone who wants to read it.

What turned me onto the book was an interview with the author on NPR. One quote from the interview stuck in my head: (the author asks this of the jailed Wes Moore who has been incarcerated for murder) “Do you think we’re all just products of our environment?” the response: “Maybe products of our expectations, or others’ expectations that you take on as your own.”

It got me thinking - do we do everything possible through our words and actions to set our children (our co-workers, our fellow members) up for the greatest successes? The jailed Wes Moore was expected to achieve very little - he came from a poor neighborhood, had been abandoned by his father and was surrounded by thugs. So, naturally, his community expected very little of him and he therefore expected little of himself - and he lived up to those expectations.

The author Wes Moore, although placed in the same environment initially, had a different set of expectations placed on him by his mother and a few special mentors. The outcome was day and night different, although it seems to have taken a force of nature at times to keep him focused on where he needed to be.

The question I have for you - how can we push each other and the kids we interact with to understand that we have higher expectations for them? We expect that our members will be successful leading committees, generating ideas and developing the members who come behind them. We expect the kids of our communities - regardless their circumstances - to be high school or college graduates and young adults who rise above what is handed to them.

Even though some of the kids we work with only meet us once or for a few hours a month, we have the ability to reset the expectations they and their communities hold.