Who are you right now?
How did you get that way?
Are you who you want to be?
In the “world of politics,” it seems questions of existence are rarely ever-present. It is assumed that people have always been who they are and will never change.
The funny thing about change is that it is eternal, happening every day.
What does personal transformation have to do with civics? Honestly, everything. We all want things to change for the better, to have our world reflect goodness. I have found that the only way for this new world to exist is to ask myself who I am and how I truly want to be.
Recently I changed my environment from the concrete-laden streets of Omaha for simpler farmland in the Pacific Northwest. For too long I thought life could only be a certain way because I stayed where I had always been. Now that I am in a new place, my eyes are opening to possibilities beyond my imagination. I am starting to realize that My Existence is Enough.
That is it. I can wake up and I have achieved. Everything after that, all my work, is just meaning-making and does not define me.
It may be hard to hear when we are immersed in a society where our value is measured by productivity, where our visions of self are shaped by material success and unrealistic expectations. Yet, all those parameters are myths created to limit the expansive vision of ourselves. If we cannot see beyond our ego, then how could we possibly change politics?
We cannot, and that is the point.
So much of our political hellscape is filled with lies, deceit, and obfuscations of reality in order to convince people of false ways. In the turmoil we lose sight of what it means to be alive, replaced by tales told to placate us into submission.
This is an existential crisis, a fundamental breakdown of our old world, making way for the next. Create space for this change by doing something you have never done before. Give yourself permission to be who you want to and are meant to be, outside of the tasks administered to you. That is how we can learn that Our Existence is Enough.
An artist, journalist, and social entrepreneur, Dawaune Hayes brings people, ideas, and resources together for positive change. In 2018, he joined forces with The Omaha Star and 101.3 FM Mind & Soul Radio to develop NOISE.
