changing ourselves

Social change is paradoxical. As with a family in crisis, sometimes change happens only after we take the spotlight off the presenting problem. Blaming scapegoats or treating the symptoms doesn’t get us anywhere. We have to go deeper and find the root causes. Until we let go of the tendency to focus on the designated “problem child” and quit trying to change what is not in our power to change, the crisis just keeps getting worse.

The solution has to start somewhere, and we won’t get anywhere until we accept the fact that we can’t change anybody or anything but ourselves. We can only mitigate our participation in the problem, attend to our own psychological and emotional health, seek out our heart’s true desire, live our way into our own best version of self-actualization, and make waves that will overturn the apple carts of oppression, corruption, apathy, and complicity.

It might seem selfish to put so much focus on ourselves and our own wellbeing when other people have problems a lot worse than ours, but like the mother in the airplane who puts the oxygen mask on herself before getting a mask on her child, we aren’t any good to anyone if we are incapacitated.