Dear Diary,
I was really tired last week. Like, really tired. Like in my bones. Throughout my body. In my brain. Just, tired. My first inclination is to react to this by powering through. I can do it. I'll get up and get going and it'll be fine. I ignore what my body is telling me with fatigue, and aches and pains, and brain fog, and I plow on through.
And then, on the, like, third day of exhaustion, despite reasonable nights of sleep, it occurs to me that maybe I should listen to my body. Maybe it's okay to take it easy. Maybe the ridiculously heavy period I'm having is somehow related to how I'm feeling. Maybe my body needs me to slow down...just for a bit.
Fun Fact: Did you know that back in biblical times, women went to a special place together during menstruation? The Red Tent. (The book of the same name, by Anita Diamant, is wonderful, by the way.) There were lots of reasons for this back then (some, not so great) that we don't need to get into right now, but menstruation became a time for rest and community.
Today, there is no rest. We power through everything. We take no breaks. We follow no cycles or rhythms. We just go. Day. Night. Summer. Winter. Healthy. Sick.
We go.
But I wonder, sometimes, if that's the right approach. Not because we can't do it-- we've proven that we can. But maybe we don't need to. Maybe following the cycles and rhythms of our bodies and of nature makes more sense. Maybe dictating our world by women's standards (ours and mother nature's) rather than men's makes more sense for us.
I've been wondering a lot lately about the ways in which our world would look different if we lived in a matriarchal society rather than a patriarchal one. Not because I dislike men, but because I'm curious. What would it look like? How would it be different?
Then I think, what if our world was truly egalitarian? If everyone was truly equal and had all of the same rights and opportunities. If we honored both the yin and yang in our culture and did not try to force one to be like the other.
Being different doesn't mean that one has to be better than the other. They can be different, but equal.
Then I wonder, what would our world look like if we were still more in tune with mother nature? If we bent, even slightly, to her rhythms? If we toiled and played later in the day when the days are long, and sought more rest and quiet when the days are short? What if we allowed the natural cycles of emotions? If we rode the ebb and flow of ups and downs, happiness and sorrow, instead of fighting for joy and energy--oh, our battle for energy!-- every moment of every day?
And what if we listened, truly listened, to our bodies? What if we slept when we were tired and ate when we were hungry (and stopped when we were full)? What if we moved often, but never took it to extremes? What if we rested when we needed it, and nurtured and nourished ourselves led by that little, knowing voice that lives within us all?
What if we listened to our intuition? Followed our gut?
I am so full of questions right now. Questions I've only every thought of as applying to myself...or yourself. To the individual. But now I'm wondering if these are, in fact, societal questions. What if we could remake our society? Take all the best of all we've learned over all of these years and just remake it.
What if we let go of our fear of change, this tight grip on what is, and open ourselves to what could be? What if we no longer accepted the status quo? If we never again said, "But that's how we've always done it" or "That'll never work" or "Leave well enough alone."
Even if we're someone who benefits from the way things are.
We could change the way we work and the way we live. We could change our government. We could change our healthcare system, our education system, our welfare system, our environment, our communities.
Real change. Big change. Change that comes from a place of love.
We could decide to abolish the red tape that seems to make institutional change so very, very hard.
We could do that.
We could all be happier and healthier and safer. We could live better lives and help each other.
If we got together, worked together, decided together. We could do it.
A revolution of love.
It's been done before. When people left Europe to seek a better life in the Americas. When people gathered together to form the United States of America. When they looked at what worked and didn't work where they came from, they wrote a constitution, laying down what they believed to be a better foundation for a better place.
But that was almost 250 years ago. The world has changed. We've learned so, so much since then. Maybe it's time to recreate the American dream. To build upon the foundation of 242 years ago. To take what we've learned here, and what others have learned elsewhere, and make big changes.
We could decide to accept all the people. All the genders. All the races. All the religions. All the ethnicities. All the colors. All the sexual orientations. All the lifestyles.
We could decide to no longer be fearful of that which is different from us. Instead, we could decide to see that we are all more alike than we are different. And that those differences are okay. Those differences don't make anyone better or worse. We are all equal. Different, but equal.
It doesn't have to be us against them. It can be us with them. All of us. In this together. Living together. Striving together. Loving together. Joining together to the make the world a better place for all of us.
When the world starts to feel like the beginning of a dystopian future novel, an optimist's reaction is to see the potential for the opening of a utopian future novel-- one in which the characters use the many wrongs to make a right, seeing the chaos as the impetus for building a better world.
Food for thought.
Until next time, start your own revolution of love. xo
Namaste.
Amy
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