Socrates wrote that the secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but in building the new.
And I wrestle with this concept on a daily basis, knowing, at a cellular level, it is true, but also needing to live, operate and expand within some systems that I know are not.
The ready questioning keeps me awake…
- Do we develop programs that educate and support more women into leadership roles in systems and workplaces that are not conducive to a feminine way of leading?
- Do we create pathways into enterprises that continue to exploit and extract because we need more women business owners?
- Do we opt for quotas simply because we need women in those places where clearly there is brokenness?
- Do we even want to play in those places?
- What would new options be like?
It is a subtle dance between what exists and what we know to be possible and the chasm or gap that exists between the two.
And in our rush to make things ‘right’ we miss the opportunity that lies between and we forget…
There is value in the GAP.
The GAP is where we get to explore, to check in, to learn our intuition, to get to know the source and the universe.
Our governments are hell bent on closing the gap and I get it – in the race for ‘equality..or equity’, but what if the GAP is the place where we decide if where we were headed was actually where we wanted to go?
Who decided that where we are is where we all want to be?
OR, when we are so focused on deciding that where we are is not right and that there is somewhere else we are meant to be we miss entirely the value and the lessons of now.
It’s an uncomfortable thing to do – to hold space for a gap in a society that wants it closed, that wants certainty and truth and to be the dissenting voice to that feels like a constant role as the protagonist in a superhero comic where said hero holds the two crushing walls apart to save a whole city..which includes the loves of their life.
But what if the loving thing to do is to let the walls fall?
Or to stay so attuned to the bigger vision and take the steps to create it while ignoring the existing system?
Some would call it anarchy….or harsh…or unfathomable….
But what are we afraid of in collapse?
What are we risking if we work so hard to avoid it that we miss the nuance of the possibility that lies beyond it?
This is as true for our personal lives as it is with our collective society.
We fill the gaps in our lives with noise, activity and stuff.
What if there was more value in the space that gaps create that allowed the brilliance of human potential and NEW to emerge that is otherwise suppressed in the quest to maintain the status quo.
What if we need to let the old die so the new can emerge and what if we need to trust the people who are holding the space of the GAP?
Are we reluctantly participating and reinforcing through our attention – systems that are doomed because we are just too afraid to dissent or because we haven’t gained clarity on what the new is?
What if #thriving #healing #evolving requires us to live in the GAP?
