Sometimes You Shouldn't Go With The Flow

"The reward for being nice in oppressive circumstances is to be mistreated all the more."
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With The Wolves

With so much uncertainty, precarity, lack of collective care and nourishment existing in our worlds at the moment, it's important that we understand we are not powerless.

You/I/We need to hold tightly and firmly to this unshakeable, undeniable, and deep rooted truth: We are not powerless.

While we're holding that truth in one hand, in the other hand we need to hold and get comfortable with another truth...our defiance is necessary.

We can't always simply go with the flow.
We can't always have "positive vibes."
We can't always keep the peace.
We can't always uphold the social contract.

Sometimes, well more times than we're comfortable with admitting, we need to be in opposition and holding a value that says we don't consent to keeping the peace or going with the flow...especially when people are being harmed, or our boundaries are being pummeled, or our collective safety isn't being taking seriously. Sometimes the only way to show people who we are is by showing them who we aren't.

You/I/We need to hold tightly and firmly to this unshakeable, undeniable, and deep rooted truth: Our defiance is necessary.

Our defiance is necessary. Both our individual and collective defiance are powerfully strong, foundation shaking, culture shifting tools. You get to say no. I get to say no. We get to say no. We get to discard the socialization that says it's unsavory, unethical, and unmoral to question things and move in a different direction. We get to change our orientation and question collective values that are built on exploitation, extraction, pain, violence, and joylessness.

We don't forge new ways of being, shift culture, create new values, or stand in solidarity with each other by simply going with the flow. Nah. We have to stand in opposition to the things, ways of thinking. people, and institutions that require our consent to keep doing harm. In both small and large ways, you/I/we must withdraw our consent from all forms of oppression and embody more pleasurable, collaborative, and joyful ways of existing. That's the work.

So on this day, on this Monday, on this first day of August 2022, I ask you: What social contracts are you no longer consenting to? In what ways are you no longer going with the flow? How is your defiance going to show up this month? Where are places and spaces inside of your world that you can shake up the status quo?

Remember these truths: You are powerful and your defiance is necessary.