“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.” (Gandhi)
Cognitive dissonance has us desperately wanting to hold onto all our outdated, but cherished attitudes and beliefs in some kind of bizarre, dysfunctional juggling act so that we can avoid disharmony and discomfort at all costs.
But this is to our detriment as we compromise here, then compromise there and we wake up to discover how we are each personally enabling imbalance of global systems by holding onto our dissonance.
The thing is, it’s going to take more than 30 or 300 activists, posts, prayers, books, demonstrations, blogs or articles to transform these imbalances…some of which are paid for with our own taxes, resources and bodies.
We know they’re enabled by silence, denial and inaction (all of which tell us something about ourselves and the collective, institutionalized, disempowerment that has us waiting for someone to come along and sort it all out).
And so, in the same way we would be ‘getting very busy very fast’ if we were personally diagnosed with cancer, we have to ‘get very busy very fast’ with these cancers. We need to stop pretending.
It gets dramatic ‘out there’ when it’s not getting addressed ‘in here’, deep within our most valued, but outdated systems.
Did you know that when the channels for representation and being truly validated and heard are closed to the people, they get out into the streets to have their say? They are not in the streets for a laugh or because they enjoy ‘whining’ and are the ‘spoiled brats’ that governments and compliant medias say they are.
Children are gathering and are in the streets globally because adults are asleep at the wheel. Because adults are too busy being comfortable-in-the-uncomfortable, like the frog in the pot, and wanting things to stay the same, even though they’re not.
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How much bigger do we want these cancers to get?
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Do not wait to see what others do. Do not wait for permission.
Go, Shine your Light, now. Shine your Light so you can see, for a start. Then, help others to see.
Together, we can build something New. Something honest, refreshing, honouring, validating. A world and a humanity that truly values and LOVES life and cherishes all living things.
We really can, you know.
Adapted from “The Revolution is Love” (c) Fatima Bacot 2014