“Well,” said a colleague, “I lived through the seventies, eighties and nineties, and now I’ve lived through most of 2020.” It is just as astrologers promised…a year of tumultuous, global transformation. If you are like me, your head has been spinning for a while, trying to keep up with the daily scandals, movements, corruption, protests and social media frenzy. Last night, instead of tuning it out so that I could sleep, I began asking myself, “What is this really all about?”
Is there some rhyme, reason or theme to this chaos, or is it random, radical divisions that happen during a time of significant change? I sat down and wrote a list of all the rallying cries I could remember from this year. When the list was complete, I asked my 16-year-old if I had left anything out, and she added to the list.
When I looked at the overall gestalt of the mess, I saw was a surprising result. Perhaps you are more astute than me, and it has been patently obvious to you the whole year. For me, it was enlightening.
All the chaos had one common message: please change the American mindset to embrace the beauty of diversity and reshape our democracy to include all people.
We are most certainly a planet in labor. The urge to break out of the womb that has held us firm is matched by the desperation to stay safe and unchanged, clinging to life as we know it. Yet, death is a necessary precursor to new birth. The woman screams, the child cries out…the risk of losing one or both is always a possibility.
We risk death for emancipation and for giving rise to something that has never been experienced…this unique, new life; this new way of life.
The United States was founded by many noble white men who were trying to emancipate their everyday lives from the social, political and religious paradigm that characterized England’s identity and to which its citizens were loyal.
Is 2020 the next American Revolution: a crescendo of all the voices that want to be included in the amenities and benefits afforded to those who look like the founding fathers?
This year it has not been one or another movement that sustained our attention, but the collective, tsunami wave of women, Blacks, immigrants, LGBQT, those who are economically or politically disadvantaged, and the planet, herself. These once fragmented minorities now form one majority voice.
Is this majority loud enough, strong enough, and determined enough to topple the democratic paradigm that advantages the old majority?
Today we decide.
This election is asking but one question: Are we ready to expand our ecosystem and commit to principles that include all people; are we ready to redesign a system that enables their voices to be equally heard and included?
Or will we call this pain “false labor,” and go home to wait for the pangs to grow more powerful before we are ready for the inevitable?
Vote. Every voice counts.
Therese Rowley, Ph.D.
As a skilled intuitive, consultant, and thought leader, Dr. Rowley supports leaders making strategic decisions with intuitive data and deepens their access to intuition. Her work with Fortune 500 and smaller company leaders in facilitating large scale change in industries such as telecommunications, manufacturing, market research, marketing/communications, real estate development, and financial services spans three decades.