I’m excited to be joining in with The Indie Exchange’s #FlashFiveFriday event. The premise is very simple: five minutes flash blogging or flash fiction based on a prompt set by The Indie Exchange each week.  This week the prompt is Strength.

The Guidelines

#FlashFiveFriday is a weekly flash fiction/flash blogging prompt.

The rules are very simple if you’d like to take part:

1) Write for no longer than five minutes
2) No upper or lower word limits
3) You must write something new
4) You can prepare your post ahead of time but the 5 minute limit still applies
5) If you add your blog post to the weekly linky (found at The Indie Exchange) you must visit five other blogs that week too to show your support

#FlashFiveFriday: Strength

#FlashFiveFriday - StrengthWhen I think strength, I think physical prowess, professional or Olympic athletes or, better yet, regular people with a lean, powerful build. I think of the strong-minded, willful warriors with the grit to muscle through challenges. The might of all these people pales, I think, in comparison to the strength of those who dare to step outside the cultural moment, hold onto their convictions and dreams despite mass rejection.

Culture is a powerful force. It both shapes and manipulates thought, overtly through received content, via education or unbiased media, covertly through entertainment and art. Covert ideas-presented subconsciously in the subtle arc of a drama, the problems and solutions framed in books, TV, movies, in biased reports, journalists shaping thought by manipulating words-seep in quietly, and, unopposed, become the cultural norm. Collective assumptions rooted in the subconscious feel like core beliefs. A challenge feels like a challenge to the most fundamental part of the self.

Those who dare to refute our fundamental assumptions face rejection, ridicule, ostracism. Groupthink is, of course, not always-even often-correct. Yet those who rail against it may wait years, or a lifetime, to get a fair listen, if they get one at all. Refusing to stand down or be silenced by the crowd -this, to me, is true strength.