University of Michigan Dance Marathon (UMDM) ended at around 4pm on a Sunday. The experience of it all and one particular conversation with someone--I'll spare her name here since I haven't asked her permission to mention it--about "[not] completely drinking the kool-aid about anything" inspired me to draft this...proclamation of sorts...immediately after the event. It's something I've been mulling over for the past year and this is the second version of my "fire talk".

It is a succinct version of what motivates me. Of course, being a dutiful husband, father and community member (if I'm so fortunate) supersedes this to some degree. My original copy went through the washing machine (I think, hopefully I'll find it), which I'm really upset about. It is recreated for safe-keeping here.

My cousin Nakul is someone I think about almost daily. A few weeks before I started the 9th grade, he was bit by a mosquito carrying Dengue Fever. He suffered tremendously (it is said that his body crackled like fire and he whimpered for an apple near the end) before he died. Years later, I realized his death had monumental impact on my life. I do not bring him up as an example for public-health advocacy. Rather, his case is something I bring up because it is an example of institutional failure.

Institutions and organizations play an immense role in determining our lives. They can allow for the beauty in our lives to flourish or they can make the world grim. They can destroy our moral fiber and make us less than human. Virtuous things, I think, are what makes life beautiful and worth living. Virtue and life must not be destroyed, they must be enabled and protected.

There are too many things in the world that negatively affect our lives that we cannot control. However, we can control, develop and transform institutions and organizations--so we must. Enabling and protecting life and virtue from the institutions and organizations that mangle them is one of my supremest and sincerest convictions*. Enabling and protecting life and virtue from the institutions and organizations that mangle them is what fires me up.

Addendum* - Public organizations, namely the US Government, are the class of organizations that I think are most influential, potent and dangerous. Consequently, transforming public organizations into protectors and enablers of life and virtue is my ultimate passion and commitment.