13 - How Do You Measure Progress?

How do you measure progress? Do you know what it looks like? How it sounds? Is it something that you can hold? Can it be found in a bank account? Or in the freedoms exercised? Or in the expansion of rights? The question of progress is tricky. Put aside what it might mean for a second. Put aside how you might interpret it for a moment. Does the word even make sense to you? Progress. Where’s the starting point? Compared to what? To whom?

As I was writing the collection of short stories, it became very easy and comfortable to rely on an assumption that I hadn’t fully explored: progress is measured by opportunities across generations. I know this simply as the following question: do the children have it better than the parents? That’s what I was asked while growing up. It’s a question that I keep returning to today. Progress is why so many people work so hard, for a future, for their kids, for a possibility, it’s sometimes done on belief, almost an act of faith. It seems pretty straightforward. We measure progress by opportunities that can hopefully translate into something tangible – better jobs, higher levels of education, higher pay, a bigger house. Progress is sometimes the act of passing down, to realize, to help usher in. #BridgeBetweenPodcast

This week’s episode asks a deceptively simple question: How do you measure progress?