“From Revolution Within”

-by Gloria Steinem:

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There is a quiet revolution that begins within us.

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It begins when we stop measuring our worth by the approval of others. When we begin to understand that our lives are not valuable because we have succeeded, pleased someone, or lived up to an expectation. Our worth is not something we earn. It is something we discover.

 

There are voices around us telling us who we should be—voices of fear, comparison, ambition, convention, and sometimes even voices we have carried within ourselves for so long that we mistake them for truth.

 

But beneath those voices there is another voice: quieter, more patient, more compassionate. It reminds us that we belong to one another. That our dignity is inseparable from the dignity of every other person. That becoming fully ourselves need not mean becoming separate from the world, but becoming more capable of loving it.

 

Perhaps the sacred work of a lifetime is learning to hear that voice.

 

And perhaps courage is not always a matter of standing up and speaking loudly. Sometimes courage is simply refusing to believe that we are less than we are. Sometimes it is allowing ourselves to grow, to change, to begin again.

 

This morning, may we remember that there is nothing we need to prove before we are worthy of love.

 

May we recognize that same worth in one another.

 

And may the freedom we find within ourselves become a freedom we help make possible for others."