revolution

by Stacy Hein

We need a revolution.

Yeah, that's dramatic.
But isn't the world dramatic?
I mean, come on.
We are surrounded and inundated.
We are divided, judged, cast aside.
We are confused and led.

Here's what we are being sold:
Fake news (and who even knows which news that is really?);
irrelevant ideals of success;
society-designated labels and boxes;
pharmaceuticals;
remedies and empty promises;
workshops, must-reads, a bottomless sea of self-help bullshit;
a veritable cornucopia of numbing agents;
politics, conspiracy theories;
self-designated gurus;
and a spiritual movement that should truly come with a warning label at this point.

Reaching.
Striving.
​As if we're broken.
Or not enough.
​As if.

The truth is:
We don't need a guru.
We don't need the latest book about how to be a better whatever.
No one should be on a pedestal.
No one.

What we need is an unfiltered life.
Fearless, honest experience.
Genuine human connection.
Time to process.
Yes.

Enough time in our days to be still enough to hear ourselves think.
Time to breathe;
to stick our feet in the river—or better yet, our bodies.
The space to say fuck it to anything that doesn't fit.
Fuck it.

The strength to walk away.
The courage to change our minds.
The integrity to honor what we say,
and say what we feel.
Moments quiet enough to create inside of.
The bravery to forgive.
Really forgive.

The vulnerability of compassion and empathy.
The awareness to own what we really want,
not what we've been told to want;
to own what we really feel,
not what we've been told to feel.
Let's say that word again.
FEEL.

And then - 
The audacity to change.
The ferocity to take back our birth right;
Freedom.
Liberation.

This is the revolution.
​