In 2009, Elwyn Wilson was watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama and saw iconic civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis sitting behind the President on the inaugural stage. Wilson was stirred to action. He soon after called Congressman Lewis and offered him an apology. It was he, forty years earlier during the Freedom Rides that helped bring about the Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, who had beaten Mr. Lewis at a bus terminal in South Carolina. The Congressman remembered their encounter and accepted his apology, inviting him to Washington for a meeting and starting an unlikely friendship.
Meeting in Lewis’s office, “the two men prayed together and talked about life, hope and redemption.” During a later appearance on Oprah’s TV show, Lewis said “He’s the first and only person who ever apologized to me.”
In this story, Lewis and the other Freedom Riders are the Heros with a capital H. But Wilson’s act of humility demonstrates a strength of character that we should spend the time to honor and uplift. What was his motive? I suspect he just had to “get it right with himself.” He knew what his soul needed in order to make amends.
Sky Nelson-Isaacs is a physicist studying choice through the lens of synchronicity and the vast multiverse of possibilities that we live in. How do we navigate infinite possibility? When we face difficult choices, we want to look back and say “I got it right with myself.” We’ll explore synchronicity as a tool we can use to find our way through life’s curriculum.