I recently attended a conference for mothers of boys. The keynote speaker, Kate Stone Lombardi, spoke about our society’s deep cultural belief system that suggests boys need to be pushed away from their mothers, lest they become “mama’s boys” (and therefore feminine…which would somehow be undesirable.) She also made note of “an underground social movement that is quietly ignoring those messages” and my ears perked up. This “quiet revolution”, as she put it, is happening because more and more women are simply choosing to break rank with this belief system and were just mothering according to their own instincts. And – here’s the cool part – because they were flying under the radar, not making a big deal about it or announcing it, no one noticed. Or cared. A revolution that can happen right under our noses and in broad daylight? How wonderfully brilliant.
This whole notion got me thinking about change as a way of being as opposed to an event or a specific action. We talk so much about “fighting” and “doing battle” and “going toe to toe” and “head to head” and “speaking out” and how “complex” change is (yada, yada…) it’s easy to understand how we might get lulled into staying put. What if we just lived our way into it – whatever “it” is to you – today instead of merely talking about it? What if we all stopped waiting for just the right circumstances to miraculously appear to create this change? What if profound and revolutionary change occurred in our everyday – or every moment – actions? What if the change you are seeking could begin happening RIGHT NOW? What if it could be that simple?
But wait, IS it that simple? Not necessarily, because to adopt this way of being in the world requires us to authorize ourselves to act on our instincts and our intuition – to be our own green light and not wait for permission or external validation. It requires us to take responsibility and to listen deeply to our own inner knowing and obey it. It potentially sets us up to be different than others, to be judged, to fail, to disappoint ourselves or – worse yet – others. And yet, women are doing just that every day. They are living their way into change. Some we see and some we don’t. But make no mistake, there are quiet revolutionaries among us.
So the question is: Are you ready to break rank and be one?
