Change always happens slowly … then all at once. H/T Seth Godin
We look away for a minute and our kids are grown. When we aren’t paying attention, it can seem like change is sudden.
The same is true with cultural change. It always happens relatively slowly. Person by person, conversation by conversation. It takes time to establish expectations, then define roles, and finally to build systems.
Change only happens from a foundation.
The people in the news and at the podium get all the attention, but they’re usually a symptom, not the cause. Everyday people aren’t at the bottom. We are the roots, the foundation, the source of culture itself.
Take school shooters, for example. Parents can create a culture in our homes that feeds and grows risk factors. We can neglect problems or even accelerate the emotional disease that results in murder and suicide.
Yes, that is true. And …
Your family can do what laws and police and schools cannot do. Parents can create family cultures that serve a unique preventative and healing function.
You can model honest and vulnerable ways to manage unpleasant and dark feelings before they turn into intolerance and hate and dehumanization. You hold the antidote to the poison that kills innocent kids and worshippers and doctors and grocery shoppers.
Seth Godin: “We are the culture, and we change it or are changed by it.”
The internet would like us to focus on what happened five minutes ago. Go to this protest, solve this crisis, kick this bum out of Congress.
If you want to prevent the next mass shooting, keep talking. Raise your kids. Be a model for them.
They are watching EVERYTHING you do. What do you expect from others? What do you talk about? Who do you emulate?
When you are growing a whole human, you can’t afford to day-trade. You focus on the months and years.
If you want to REALLY change things, take consistent action. Don’t get distracted or blown off course.
Today, take one small action. Engage in one more conversation. There is only one way to build a wall: brick by brick.
They will notice. You will inspire.
Keep taking action. Stay focused.
photo credit: Faris Mohammed/Unsplash
credit for original premise: Seth Godin, the kind and generous person who introduced me to Austin Kleon, who taught me to steal like an artist.
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