I met David Hogg, one of the leading voices for generational change in the Democratic Party, at a round-table discussion I attended here in Washington, D.C. this past week.
I only spoke with him for a few minutes, just long enough to register my support for his mission, acknowledge its high degree of difficulty, express my gratitude for his efforts, and offer some words of encouragement.
What he’s pushing for is a paradigm shift; a new model for how political action and discourse take place.
Paradigm shifts are very hard to engineer because the people who are invested in—and profiting from—the existing paradigm don’t want things to change. History tells us that as long as they’re around and holding positions of power, the shift doesn’t happen.
In politics, in science, in social structures—the only way to establish a new paradigm is to dislodge the people who are clinging to the old one.
But what if we’re trying to shift an inner paradigm—a story we’re telling ourselves or a pattern of thinking that perpetuates habits that hold us back?
Then the part of ourselves that’s invested in the existing paradigm has to be dislodged; we have to let go of the part of our identity that’s clinging to the old story.
Which is hard because that part of ourselves is so invested in the old story that it needs it in order to exist.
And, for whatever reason, we cling to that part of ourselves even though we know we need to let it go in order to grow.
In the Yoga-sutras, this is called abhiniveśa: fear of death.
Fear of death (or clinging to life) is the fifth obstacle to the experience of yoga. It’s a natural outgrowth of the third and fourth obstacles: attachment and aversion, also referred to as desire and hatred.
These lead to yet another obstacle, highlighted in the Bhagavad-gita: anger. When we don’t get what we want or get what we don’t want, we get angry.
And it’s a lot easier to get caught up in a cycle of attachment, aversion, anger, and fear than it is to let go the part of ourselves that clings to the cause of that cycle.
Fear, anger, and desire can motivate us to take positive action. David Hogg’s personal history is a good case in point.
But in order to constructively channel these feelings into a higher purpose, we need to be free from them, or at least free enough to think clearly and act intelligently.
In the Gita, Krishna encourages Arjuna accordingly:
Cultivating inner steadiness sometimes means letting go of old ways of thinking or reacting—ways that keep us in a doom loop of stagnation and imbalance.
There has to be a leap of faith that the person who emerges from the fire of meaningful transformation will be someone we’ll be happy to become; that all we’re really losing is an anchor, that the freedom we’ll gain is worth letting a part of ourselves that’s past its expiration date die.
Everything is changing all the time, so you would think change would be effortless.
And yet, change is hard.
Personal growth is hard. Collective growth is hard.
And getting an entire society to change course? Very hard.
It’s hard to make it happen and, when things are changing, it’s uncomfortable at best, painful at worst.
But when a needed change finally takes place, it feels great.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k