“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014)
Change is a natural part of life. We experience it constantly. There are many situations which we have the power to induce change. We change our clothes, our speech, our behavior. We change the sheets on the bed and change a tire when it’s flat. We make change when we purchase a snack from the vending machine and we generously tell the cab driver to keep the change. As a woman myself, and on behalf of all women, we have the prerogative to change our minds. We just do.
The seasons change with the passing of time and friends change with age and maturity. We change seats, change planes, change the baby, change direction. We do these things with ease and with little thought sometimes. Yet, nothing can be more challenging than radical change. Either in our own personal lives or in regards to social change. Change can be natural. But real change is hard. Radical change is difficult.
I know the pain of personal, unplanned, horrific change. I have walked through a season of change in my own life that very nearly took me out of the game completely. It was quite honestly…hell. I survived. I could not change the circumstances of this drastic change. It was beyond my power. I could not raise the dead. I had to begin the difficult practice of living with this change. The only way this could successfully happen was with a change in my attitude. Some things, as painful as they might be, must be accepted. However, there are things which cannot be accepted.
Some things should not be accepted.
When we are made aware of injustice in our world we must do the work to change it. We must fight for radical change when change is absolutely critical. When a system is broken, we must do all we can to change it. We must always fight to end hunger, poverty, abuse, illiteracy, homelessness, etc. These things we must never accept as normal or inevitable.
As the late Maya Angelou explained…“If you don’t like something change it.”
