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Growing Consciousness

“Perhaps the greatest progress, humanly speaking, in these past twenty years, for both women and men, is in the growth of consciousness.”

                                  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

         People who are my age do a good bit of reflecting on the past; most of life is now behind us instead of ahead.  When I think about the gains in consciousness made in my lifetime, I feel good about where humanity is headed.  Sometimes we lose track of that progress in times of economic distress; we tend to see only the failures of our culture and our way of life. 

         We’ve made some big mistakes, but in addition to our mistakes, we’ve developed many strengths.  We’ve become conscious, for instance, of inequality based on race, gender, sexual orientation and class, and we’ve taken steps to set that right.  We’ve called into question the materialism of Western societies, where for too long the bottom line has mattered more than the people whose lives were impacted.  We’ve become aware of the inter-relatedness of all life on the planet and the necessity of conserving and sharing the resources.  We’ve begun to understand that our lives are lived internally as well as externally, and that we must tend to our internal climate as well as our external one.

        

         We now take these advances for granted.  My sons cook and clean and will, when the time comes, feed, diaper, and care for their children—my father did not do these things.  My daughters-in-law take for granted that their work will provide equal pay and prestige to their husbands’—my mother never worked outside the home.  My sons’ generation cares not one whit whether their friends are black, white, brown, gay, or lesbian.  In fact, they prefer diversity.  We have made great strides in these areas; let’s not lose sight of that.

         To be sure, we have a long way to go, but not as far as we once had.  Consciousness is the beginning of movement in the right direction.  It is critical that we not allow negative voices to drag us backwards and make us think that everything is wrong in our society.  We may have stumbled, but we have not fallen.

                                  Seeking the light,

                                  Jane