Be An Evolutionary

In Abby Wombach’s Wolfpack she talks about her memory of a new coach getting out a guitar and singing Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a Changin’ at their first meeting. The players thought this was weird at first, then uncomfortable, then finally they felt moved. The new coach didn’t want them to just win games, she wanted them to win beautifully, to move people. Rather than just saying the words, she expressed this through her actions.

This prompted me to listen to Bob Dylan, it’s been a while since I have heard The Times They Are a Changin’ which then led to me listening to many other of those old folk rock songs of the era that ushered in a period of radical social change.

As I thought about some of those revolutionaries, I realised that I feel more called be an evolutionary.
A revolutionary is someone who creates radical political or social change in a relatively short time, through a process of resistance to the status quo, and it creates a lot of unrest that often doesn’t end well for many. Whereas an evolutionary, I think, is someone who expresses the change they want to see through the way they are living their life, they more quietly stand in their own truth in the way Abby Wombach’s coach did.

It’s perhaps the story of the tortoise and the hare because being an evolutionary is likely to create a gradual change that takes place from within. Don’t get me wrong, I want change now, but the change I want to see needs focus, patience, resilience and love and that starts inside me. 

When I was born, only seven years after Bob Dylan’s song of social and political change, The New Seekers were at number one in the UK music charts with I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. It was a time of hope and feels completely in tune with my own mission to be who I am and help others be who they are:

I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land

While many things have changed tremendously in the last half century, I believe what hasn’t changed dramatically is the root of our discord. It’s my belief that the discord between humans comes from the discord within humans.

Let me share my reasoning. Right from the early months of our lives it seems that the vast majority of us are taught right and wrong, good and bad, by our family, community and society. This results in feelings of anxiety or shame about our own desires if they are not aligned with those to whom we have been born. In short, we become encultured into a world that tends not to allow us the freedom to be who we are.

And by the time we are independent enough to think these things through for ourselves, we are already so shrouded in others’ beliefs that most of us buy into that neural and emotional wiring (that took place within us in those early stages) as our guide to what is good and bad in life.

We think if we feel anxiety or shame we must be doing something wrong, yet in reality all we are experiencing is the anxiety or shame of not living up to our early caregivers’ beliefs and expectations of us, regardless of whether they are truly aligned with our own.

To sum up, we lose sight of who we are and what we truly feel about anything.

Christian Morgenstern said "Don't let the mouth say what the heart doesn't feel." I realised some years ago that I was no longer sure of who I was and what I actually felt. There was a dull pain that I felt in my own discord, a tugging, nagging, persistent pain. To speak my truth I knew I’d have to undertake a journey of discovery to figure out who I am.

Even though I’m now much clearer about who that authentic me is, I still feel that pain sometimes, a teacher returning to its student. It is like a hopelessness that descends every now and again, an amplification of all that discord that existed and those parts that still persist; I call this my black mood.

When this pain descends, I know it is waiting to be felt, to be acknowledged, to be experienced without being pushed away. I did spend many years pushing it away, pushing it down; being too busy to contemplate any of it. Then I became a parent.

What I deeply desired for my children is the freedom to be who they are. I failed in this spectacularly, and continue to at times, not for a lack of love for them but a lack of love for myself. It is not my intention, but there was a lack of knowing myself and being able to stand in my own truth. So what to do?

I took the journey to me. I got still, I listened to the thoughts and feelings within me and I keep listening, over and over. Through it come insights, clues to my true nature. I started to respond to things differently, more authentically, did I want to participate in this/that/the next thing?

​Slowly I became more aware of my truth, and that it is only my truth. I am realizing we each have our own truth; because we are each such a unique cocktail that what is right for one is not necessarily right for another. Slowly I am becoming a better parent, allowing my kids to be who they are and blossom in their truth.

So you see, allowed to be who we are, standing hand in hand with those across the world that – in our judgments of old we might have despised and hated – is not an overnight thing, it’s a journey that begins with the self. To figure out what stems from beliefs placed in our heads rather than felt in our hearts.

Because in our hearts we would know that the person who seems like a wimp is actually just strong in other ways that we can’t yet appreciate. We would know that the person who seems overbearing is actually just scared. We would know that the colour of a person’s skin, their socio economic status, their circumstances are not right or wrong, good or bad, they are just different experiences. We would hold their hand and see that hand as an extension of our own.

The communities, societies and structures would begin to honour and reflect the individual. This evolution starts with evolutionaries, like you and me, standing in our own truth and becoming who we truly are.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Become You, What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution and Stand in Your Own Truth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog