I’m an activist.
I actively dismantle unhelpful narratives presented as reality.
I actively uncover parts of myself that are at war so that I can come to peace with myself.
From that place, I’m actively creating a different reality.
I’m not Gretha Thunberg. I’m not blocking any roads.
I’m not going to war with any other ideology.
But that IS my activism. A force for an alternative to war.
An activism of being, out of which the doing emerges.
If someone tells me ‘you’re not an activist’, I’m not going to war with their version of activism.
Because they are doing what is right for them.
But how does that enact change, or make any crisis stop, they ask. You are living in your own world, they say.
We’re all living in our own worlds, but many people give their power away to a reality not serving them. And then call it THE reality. And we form a battle between those who support THE reality and those who fight it. And in that, communities of belonging are created – supporting our need for safety but not necessarily our need for change.
So in the process of acting to change, we create more of the same.
But there is an alternative, a way to break that cycle. And that is going inwards – breaking our cycles. Unlearning our habits, getting conscious of unhealthy patterns, and allowing the discomfort under the pattern to emerge, be felt and released.
It’s the most challenging type of activism, because we have to release the blame – on a government, on a leader, on a system, on a person. That blame is an energy leak, which eventually causes burnout. The energy can’t keep going out without consequences. Burnout is not proof that the world sucks. It is a call. Life was generous enough to give us burnout so that we can be called inwards.
The inwards journey is a path of activism, freeing ourselves from our own mental and emotional prisons so that we can shine our light into the world.
That IS the change.