The revolution starts now
When you rise above your fear
And tear the walls around you down
The revolution starts here

The Revolution Starts Now
Steve Earle
Sarangel Music
2004

What did you do today to support your local revolution, “in your own backyard, in your own hometown”? With so much destruction and negative energy in the world, the only hope that we have is in changing where we stand. Long before we can effect those larger, global changes that are necessary, all we need to find our own local revolutions to support, to change our own realities, to make them fit our true value systems and make our communities more viable, more sustainable and more organically logical.

In all of my realities, music stands beside me, holds my head up when I’m tired, pushes my heart forward when I fear. Music serves not so much as the catalyst of change but as the anthems for what changes are already taking place around us. It’s not that music incites the change around us but it reflects the changes that we want or have already begun to feel.

When I look at my life, I see small steps towards my own revolution. Quitting a job that didn’t align with my values was a big step and one of the biggest risks that I have ever taken. Starting my own consulting business was another giant leap of faith in my own personal revolution.

For months, as I was driving into work, I had over an hour each way to listen to music. Steve Earle always fit into my daily play list, somewhere. I find Earle an interesting character, as well as talented musician – a bit of an iconoclast, he had times when he seemed to try too hard to be a rebel but it’s songs like the Revolution Starts Now that strike my heart as true. It always made me think about how I lived and if my values were reflected in that living. On some levels, I was doing just that but in other respects, I was avoiding what I knew to be true. Although I did not actively participate in the Machine, I was a cog that facilitated its negative work. By breaking my ties to the empty pursuit of the company’s goals, I landed squarely into a new but far more satisfying reality. I had spent months fighting the truth that I could leave at any time, until it became obvious that there was no healthy future in staying. I had to have faith that this movement was far from the end of my career but that it was a turn in my road, a new field in my own revolution. I am learning that we are all trying to find our ways through the world and that I need to learn patience with those who are not openly, actively seeking their own truths.

Thought for the day: If our hands were allowed to create the kind of world that reflects who we are and what we believe, what is stopping our hands from acting? Essentially, it is ourselves; we stop or start the motors of our own revolutions, no one else. Knowing that, what have you done today to create your own reality?