In describing the novel WORTHY, I claim that we need her alternative views on life, especially race, more than ever. How can a girl living in 1945 have anything “alternative” to say about modern life?

Alternative views have been the same since societies began forming.

Human nature has not changed over time. Each person is susceptible to a clamoring for power and control at all cost, lack of compassion for others, and a tendency to lie in order to keep peace or get what they want.

You have a conscience and common sense. Allow them to work in tandem to guide your life. Many spend much of their life-energy self-justifying and rationalizing things that are false, pretending things are something other than what they really are.

As Stephen R. Covey says, “Let go of rational-lies-ing.”

In the Emperor Has New Clothes story, only a child speaks up to say, “He’s naked” as the Emperor parades by in his “new clothes.” If you are all grown up but still that child speaking the truth or at least thinking it, you have an alternative view.

Worthy comes to see that color, gender, talent, and economic condition creates distinctions among people, but it is not what defines their life purpose or outcome. Distinctions make life interesting, create the yin and yang in relationships or work environments.

The lesser parts of human nature causes us to look for ways to prove we are better, more acceptable than others. Therefore, sometimes we use differences to hold people back.

If you will look around, like Worthy did, what you’ll find is that skin color can be one man’s advantage and another man’s handicap. Money might buy a man’s way into high-society one day, but the next it is the source of his death. Beauty might get a woman into the house of a wealthy man, but it does not always make her happy.

Worthy sought truth at all cost. Until she was willing to literally die for the truth, she was just another poor, beaten down girl with hollow dreams. Real power and individual freedom comes to those who press past fear of the truth and fear of being meaningless.

Carla G. Harper - Author, Publisher, Speaker