change
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
—Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy
“Hope is a discipline.” —Mariame Kaba
p. 54 in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us
garadinervi : repertori
garadinervi-repertori.blog
"We who are Black are at an extraordinary point of choice within our lives. To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming. It means doing the unromantic and tedious work necessary to forge meaningful coalitions, and it means recognizing which coalitions are possible and which coalitions are not. It means knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step. It means fighting despair."
—Audre Lorde, Feb 1982
The terms shortsighted and inevitable are familiar; I would love to have longsighted as a term for the capacity to see patterns unfold over time, and maybe evitable as the opposite of inevitable.
Speaking of evitability, I've cherished unpredictability as the other face of possibility—if you already know what's going to happen, there's nothing more
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
—Octavia E. Butler, p. 3 in Parable of the Sower
Change will be shaped, with or without my conscious intent or involvement. Inaction shapes change, too.
from p. 24 - 25 in Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia E. Butler