The Audacity of “Changing the World”
By Lisa Shannon
I have a confession. As often as my story is framed as “one person makes a difference,” the phrase always makes me cringe…at least a little. Primarily because mine has been the story of so many people showing up for Congo, whether through a $10 donation, attending a house party, posting on Facebook, writing a letter to our government, putting in 30 hours of volunteer work every week, on top of job and family, or even launching their own non-profits.
Second, I have grown to consider the question “Can one person make a difference?” well, silly. Uh…the entire history of humanity is nothing but the cause and effect of personal actions! Welcome to planet Earth, baby! By virtue of breathing, we change the world. With every choice to love or dismiss others, to be kind or mean, we change the world. With every choice to consume, and what to consume, we change the world.
The question is, can you play your small yet catalytic role? What I have witnessed, at every turn, is a resounding yes. By showing up in small ways, you have an impact – on the lives women directly aided, in pressure on our government, the impression on your friends, family, and especially on the children around you who watch you act, and watch it matter. There is no question that by virtue of showing up in small ways for people on the other side of the planet – women we’ve never met – we change the world. Often, we cannot begin to imagine the real-life reverberations of these acts; we will certainly never be able to measure them.
Many policy experts cringe at what they term “oversimplified” messaging. In my nine years in advertising, and 15 years in storytelling, I have frankly never seen this line work: “It’s a totally complicated problem, well, ‘situation’ that’s kinda bad but kinda better, well, mostly bad, you’ll never be able to make a dent in your lifetime, I mean, you don’t matter and you won’t matter, but please, spend all your free time and money trying. Thanks!” Though experts often hide behind this kind of hedging, in my experience, it’s often oversimplified in its own way, ignoring hard facts about world history, social movements like those to “abolish slavery” and “ban apartheid”, and the impact regular people can and do have every day, to the point it becomes an issue of intellectual integrity in its own right. But hey, if someone knows how to mobilize the masses on that line, game on.
Yet, the unbelievably grandiose idea that we are going to try to “end the violence in Congo” is tricky. In this results-oriented world, maybe we start with a basic question: Reviewing history, what happens when we act to “end violence”? What happens when we fail to act? What happens when we act…and fail?
It’s a valid question with a maddening answer: We might fail. We hope violence will end in Congo in our lifetime (because that’s what the hope is), and yet we know it may not. That doesn’t mean the actions we take now don’t matter. They do. They will help steer Congo and our government in the right direction, today, next year, and 100 years from now. That’s the nature of social change.
How do I know this? Because my activist path has been paved with wildly ambitious (and admittedly naïve) goals and I’ve seen the results.
The year I started Run for Congo Women, I wanted to raise $10,000, enough to sponsor 30 women through Women for Women International. I had never done any fundraising, speaking, organizing, or much running! We raised $28,000 and sponsored 80 women.
When other amazing women like Tracy Ronzio and Robin Potawsky contacted me wanting to do their own run, I decided the logical next goal should be 1 million. Didn’t get there the first year. Or the second. Or the third. Or fourth. Or fifth. But today, our fundraising totals are more than 11 million.
When we learned the tech lobby was working behind closed doors to strip the conflict minerals legislation, a bunch of moms and Facebookers went up against some of the biggest lobbies in our country – jewelry, manufacturing, retail, and the tech industry. We won.
We’ve also reliably fallen short of our goals. At Outcry for Congo, we aimed for 10,000 Facebook posts. We got 2000—but 650,000 post views.
At the run in Congo, Generose could only run a third of a mile. No, she didn’t “finish”…but she did end up in the New York Times, Runners World magazine, and ABC World News Tonight with the message, “If I can run on only one leg, everyone will know they can do something to help.”
Somehow, these wildly ambitious goals seem to come to be, or at least lead to something wildly positive….if we try. If we show up. If we take it as far as we can, like Generose. If we ask questions, then show up better. We may not always reach the goal, but we do consistently have an impact that’s far bigger than we could have imagined.
So, all this got me thinking. If this has worked so far, why not ask for what we really want? And what have our Congolese sisters begged for, every time I’ve asked them what they’d like to say to the U.S. government? End the violence. We need peace.
Okay, it is the most grandiose, wildly ambitious goal imaginable. But what might happen if we try? Not for our egos, as the sideline critics and haters will inevitably assume, but to work for what our sisters in Congo have asked us to?
I don’t know what will happen. But we owe it to our sisters in Congo to try. So we push the U.S. government toward a solid strategy with measurable outcomes. A Congo Plan. Now! Beginning with a Special Envoy.
Accomplishing this means stepping up. It means risking feeling stupid, silly, exposed. Leaving your comfort zone. I promise, people will try to shout you down. They will accuse you of ego and grandiosity. Or they’ll stand over your shoulder, commanding you get on your knees and prostrate at the lotus feet of The Way Things Are. Or maybe they will lean in close and whisper, “Who do you think you are?”
We launched our website Friday, and sure enough, this happened to me over the weekend. It doesn’t matter your profile, it hurts, especially when it comes from people you respect. I remembered the advice given by a fellow Oprah Power List-er, and went to that “F-you, Mother F-ers” place inside. It felt good. It helped for about 10 minutes.
But sometimes, that just isn’t enough. For those moments, remember this: There is nothing new about people reminding us – especially us girls – we’re nobody, and that we’d better climb back under that rock where we belong. The words will come. Be ready for them. But it doesn’t change this hard fact: It is your birthright to affect the world in which you live, just as it is yours to breathe. Wish the nay-sayers well, or better, lean in close, and hum a line Miss Celie’s Blues from movement godmother Alice Walker’s The Color Purple:
Oh, sister, have I got news for you: I’m somethin.
I hope you think that you’re somethin, too.
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I love this. I love that we have the audacity to think we can and will change the world. I know I’m not here to watch American Idol and knit. I agree that our smallest acts of compassion can effect change, but I believe even more strongly in the power of setting seemingly impossible goals and working diligently to achieve them. So we’ll push with you for that Special Envoy and a Congo Plan as first next steps towards peace and safety for our sisters in Congo. And in the meantime we’ll post and speak out and sign petitions and run.
[...] Check out the rest of this incredible blog post on A Thousand Sisters! [...]
thank you for putting you thoughts to paper (so to speak) and sharing them with us…if we don’t have lofty goals, we tend to settle with mediocrity. Bravo for you and bravo for ATS!
Lisa,
I agree with Robin: simply beautiful. Thank you for spurring us on. Posting on Twitter and asking everyone to read. Such a privilege to be part of this sisterhood of amazing women.
Love,
Laura
Dear Sister Lisa,
Your life has been an inspiration for me and you have given me the courage to stand up that I have had but never knew as a person changing someone’s life and that too , so far away . Well, its funny that when I stand up for someone far away in Congo , I feel more empowered myself.
I love this article as it speaks so deeply to me . I may stumble and not know the right thing to do but I am trying to make a difference . I believe in you and I know we may not end the war but each step is a step forward in that direction.
The word “HOPE” is a beautiful word because I believe that for every action I take for our wonderful Congo Sisters , it is changing the life of our Congo sisters for the better , whether the results of it are seen today or not .
Thank you , so much for being that beautiful vision of the day I dream I want to see.
Love and Hugs,
Richa
A case in point of one person’s ability to make a difference stands out for me: My senior English/Religion teacher in high school.
Sister Jacques (now called Sr. Ann) was a tall, fiercely intelligent, self-possessed, fully engaged, naturally compelling presence — a woman like no other I had met before. I’ll never forget seeing her walk across the footbridge from the convent into our school that first day to teach our first period English class. Her tall, regal bearing couldn’t be hidden, even under all those long, thick black folds and the broad, hard white circular bib of her nun’s habit.
From the moment she opened her mouth, everyone of us (smart, average, and not the least interested in anything academic) were sitting on the edge of our chairs, mesmerized. Before saying a word about nouns and verbs, or mentioning a single English poet, she traced the grand, expansive history of the galaxy, our solar system, the emergence of life on the planet, the nomadic hunter-gather tribes of Africa and Europe, the history of language, the founding of agriculture and settled communities, and language’s role in the evolution of culture and civilization as we know it.
Every cell of my body and mind was tingling that day, bitten awake, literally singing with recollective certainty: “I remember that, I was there, somehow, a part of it all!”
Three years later, when I was on a locked mental ward, it was Sister Jacques — who she was, the vibrance of her being and all the nameless ways it spoke to me – that became my lifeline and touchstone. I was searching for evidence that life could be worth living. She became the ground on which I would stand in deciding never to try to kill myself again. The moment I made that decision and took that stand to live is still vivid and alive for me: “That is the kind of woman I want to be!”
I can’t adequately describe it, but I literally felt the universe realigning … all of heaven and earth was shifting, opening the doors necessary to make that possible and real. I went to night school, then to college, got my degree, met and married Stewart … and in the months leading up to moving to Portland, I would often lie awake at night, full of intense anticipation, having the unshakable sense of standing at a cosmic threshold, sitting at the edge of the rich and dark, pregnant void of the expanding universe, knowing we were moving to Portland to meet our destiny. (And I promise to any of you who might be asking yourself: no drugs were involved.)
I would not be alive today, I would never have given birth to Julie or Lisa, I would not have been here to share in this work for Congolese women and children, or to experience the vast array of beauty and revelation in life that I have had since, if I had not been in Sister Jacques’ classes. The quality of her engagement in life and her refreshing presence to the moment and everyone around her lit a catalytic fire and hunger in my soul. She has served as a compass, opened a doorway into the expansive, mystic and mythic dimensions life that have made my life worth living.
We can never know where the seeds we cast through our being and loving and doing will fall, when they will germinate, in whom, or to what purpose. It is a magical, mysterious process. One our world needs far MORE of rather than less.
Well said Lisa! I am willing to risk those feelings that you mention. If not for peace, then for what?
Busy being somethin…
The harassment you received reminds me of the saying “No good deed goes unpunished”. And although it has cost you some duress, it appears to have had the opposite effect from what was intended. It stoked the fire of your passion and resulted in the excellent thoughts and writing of this blog post. Writing that moves us, all the more, to throw in with you.
Thank you for a lovely, warm, and brilliant essay, Lisa. You’ve reminded us all of why we are here. We do change the world simply by being here. We will continue to do what ever it takes to make a difference, because that’s who we are. No new news; I think, I’m something too. “It is oh, so fricking worth it, Ann.”
Game On!
Simply amazing.
My life experience is that each of us has the power of creation in us if we only find the courage and audacity to access it. I suspect it is never more powerful than when we stand naked and alone on the front lines of change, calling the new into existence, resolutely demanding it with no tangible support, taking the hits that come, in spite of all evidence that it is impossible, however many times we feel beaten down by the odds we are standing up against. Magic is possible … it does happen, but we have to call it forth, with the fully engaged magnitude of our heart and spirit, with all of the relentless tenacity we can muster, refusing to give up on ourselves or the good we are working to give birth to. Life will beat the hell out of us and hold us in the white heat of the fire in the process, but it is oh, so fricking well worth it!
Warm fuzzies and cold chills all over
Simply beautiful. Made me remember why I got involved. Thank you Lisa for reminding me.
Lisa,
I don’t know what it is, but your words are always inspiring, and usually make me cry a little, in a good way. I am so happy that I can be a part of this, as just me, one person, doing what I can. I started training today for my 10k that I will be walking (maybe running?) in October, and already have had several people express interest in sponsoring my walk. YAY! My goal is 10 sisters, we will see if I can do it. I’ve never fundraised before, other than cub scout popcorn sales…lol. This whole movement is inspiring, and to feel that even in a small way I can help a woman in the Congo, make things a bit better…its a win, win.
We are something! I loved this post. You are an inspiration. I am doing my thing and following my heart. I am letting my soul tell me where to go.