My LinkedIn homepage is becoming a stream of inspirational quotes and images, which normally just makes me scroll that much faster. (Every once in a while, one will fly in under my radar, avoid my ground-to-air cynicism and uplift me for just a moment before the guard dogs tear it to shreds. But it doesn’t happen that often.)

But on Tuesday, this one caught my eye:

Leap of Faith cartoonSomething bothered me about it for quite a while (and not just the fact that I couldn’t trace it back to the original artist—let me know if you know who she or he is). If this hadn’t been a week when issues of race, class and privilege are weighing in pretty heavily, it might not have struck me… but this time it did.

And it’s the fact that for some people, that “leap of faith” gap is a lot wider than for others. For some people, the consequences of a fall are a lot more dire than for others. And it’s presumptuous, even irresponsible, to ignore that fact.

So with due respect to the original artist (whom I’d love to credit), I’ve been a little presumptuous myself, and amended the original.

Revised image showing how privilege makes a leap of faith a lot easier

Mastodon