Social Media is both friend and foe; I love the connection I can maintain with International and long-ago friendships and I don’t love the constant barrage of thoughts, opinions and information that fill me up with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.
What is fascinating about it, and also a little frightening, is the window into the trends and views of society on a global scale. Despite my childhood not being that long ago… it was a different place of understanding then. My world was much smaller.
One of the gifts that this explosion of world-wide connection brings is that the doors of taboo discussions have been flung off their hinges. Everything is on the table, there is every possibility laid bare.
And with that comes a curious place that I observe, that of fundamental disempowerment. This overwhelming irony that these global conversations ‘should’ offer a space of empowerment for everyone to speak their truth with validation (and criticism!), linking support networks for minority groups and bringing them to the front stage.
Yet what I am witnessing is the ‘never enough’ response. Seemingly no matter how big the platform or how vocal the support, the complaints of mistreatment and disrespect are only escalating on an exponential level. In this place of demand for equality (even though the world is not equal and never shall be), parity and even positive discrimination, compassion, understanding and forgiveness have been left far behind.
So what I see from this is that it is not the world, or the corporations, or the communities holding anyone back, it is ourselves. In a place where every possibility has become acceptable, it is finally the inner shadows that can no longer hide behind the walls of unfairness or injustice, what is left are the core beliefs of the individuals who are unable to empower themselves. The constant striving for the next righteous march or debate is an internal striving for a feeling of wholeness and self belief; for when we hold ourselves with absolute knowing and integrity there is nothing that can stand in our way of simply being our very best selves. It is not the ‘troll’ on twitter that inhibits a person’s happiness or life choice; it is not the governments’ discrimination that stops anyone claiming their passionate life, it is only ourselves and our woundings that may have broken our spirit.
It is time now to pull back from externalising our shadows, from blaming everyone and everything. There is now every possibility offered in the world; to heal, to work, to explore, to expand, to become, to be. Take it. Take what you need to shine your best self, to model totality and to bring the tranquillity of self knowing. Everyone’s opinion is their own, hold yours for yourself, I will hold mine for myself and let everyone just be.