Lisa Hart Recently a woman said to me in a group that it helped her to know that ‘someone like you’ had trouble with something. I know she meant it as a compliment. But it gave me pause. I couldn’t respond as it brought up so much thinking and feeling.
First of all, there is the Rod Stewart song, “Someone Like You,” oddly appropriate in it’s juxtaposition… 😂 (Officially, ‘Reason to Believe’, but we all know what it should be called..)😉
Later, as it so often happens after one processes, I wanted to say, “Someone like me can’t race sailboats like you, or grow amazing vegetables like several others in the group, or offer classes and give tirelessly to their community like another and…on and on.
Someone like me is just as able, accomplished, amazing, capable and gifted as someone like you.”
When did it start, this socialization to denigrate our own capabilities and put others on a pedestal? Who does it serve? Why were we taught to aggrandize others and keep ourselves small?
More ways to colonize, control, manipulate and extract; extract worth, wealth, beauty and work.
Another symptom of Empire and Colonization. Another place to decolonize our minds.
And then there is the truth that I do NOT want to be on any pedestal to be glorified or torn down. Because that’s what happens to statues.
We are living and breathing beings of Light and Substance. Our capacity for love and creativity is endless. We are no frozen statues of misplaced worship.
May we shine our light even as we appreciate each others’.
This is true Freedom.
Image Credit: The Last Leaf/Victor Nizovtsev
