George Clooney for President of ORM Listening Week

Listening for the Sounds of Change

George Clooney’s recent Op-Ed pulled very few punches and helped push the Democrats’ antiquated dam to its much-needed collapse. My breathing grew more calm as I felt the underlying subtext of his words create real excitement within me. This was a soulful call to action, and he knew when he wrote it that it would force his Democrats to delve a little further into their own personal truths. Republicans, too, if they read it. The sensational highlights hit the algorithms, and we were all fed the parts most suited to affect us. 

How it affects us is wholly irrelevant. The system is designed to offer us things that will make us (1) feel something and (2) then take action. It doesn’t care to distinguish positive from negative, and that is where we find a massive energetic  bottleneck of thoughts and feelings. The dam gave way and the events that occurred over the next couple of weeks have had us all spilling our collective emotions. Whether you lean Right, Left or Center, it became clear and obvious that action was inevitable. 

On a bad day, George Clooney will do his level best to bring wholeness to whatever he takes on, and he is well aware that he, too, exists as part of the problem. That’s what makes his voice continue to rise above so many others. He is a passionate human being who lives in deep awareness and gratitude of where he gets to sit in the world. He values that platform by trying to create the space for all voices, without trying to make an end game of his own. He is interested in providing opportunities for people to change their minds, and that means shaking up the current climate. He is willing to stake his reputation on what he believes in, and that is the mark of a true influencer.  

Clooney called out people (including himself, btw) who have turned their televisions down, turned their attentions to something/anything else, and refused to outwardly acknowledge what they subconsciously knew was stirring. This isn’t shameful behavior. This is the natural path to getting our attention. This op-ed did more than just ask for change, as my personal news feed proclaimed. He offered up a simple framework to work within and made an impassioned plea towards the collective energy that would be needed to make it happen. He didn’t say it directly, but it felt to me like he was graciously and thankfully bowing out of a long game of political ‘chicken’. Not because he’s afraid to lose, but because continuing to play by the current rules limits the vision needed to infuse healthy energy into public efforts. It gave me room to breathe and listen to his idea.

He proposed a simple concept –  that anyone with genuine interest in running for President make their intentions known, and get to the business of representing themselves and their intentions. In the article he states, “Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another but, in the short time we have, focus on what will make this country soar.”  Can you imagine?! We have never tried this approach, but given the short amount of time before the election, I’m up for listening to politics. If we could all spend the time listening to each candidate’s ideas for our country (and not the issues they have with the other candidates) we could all find something to resonate with and it might quell the conflicts a little bit. 

The spirit of togetherness has never been more available to us –  no matter which party line we tow. The events of the past few weeks have the opportunity to move our perspectives to a much broader horizon, so that we can all take a better look at what we really want for and from our country. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump was right about the need to drain the swamp. So far, he has failed to realize that he is part of it, too, but this week may be the start of a new approach across the board. (it could happen!) That’s the subtext that made me feel moved by the op-ed. It’s also the fuel that has me passionate about what happens next in a way that I haven’t been in a very long time. Maybe ever. I had definitely become one of the people who rolled my eyes and changed the subject when politics was mentioned. And I used to love politics!

Sometimes we must express our feelings before we are truly able to listen. It doesn’t even have to be out loud – it just needs to be a-llowed! Acknowledgement is a valuable part of incorporating our challenging emotions into our experiences. Without it, the same issues can become triggered over and over again. How often do you see people become outraged on behalf of others in a way that they never would for themselves? Our inability to work with our emotions in real time has killed our instinct to protect our own creative input. Instead, we have been conditioned to question it, or invalidate it, or at least feel stupid for thinking we had any power to begin with. And this pattern of thinking generally comes from people who believe they have our best interests at heart!

This maze of emotional manipulations and control roots all the way back to the dawn of humanity, when the first guy (I’m assuming, but here I am aware of my own judgment) stepped forward and said, “you know this water that we all need to survive? It belongs to me now, so in order to have it, you must do something for me in return. I’m sure it wasn’t quite that simple, but also not that far off either. The birth of our human egos and the resulting distortions to the awareness that we are all connected to everything around us, has been a natural process for our country. Without specifically meaning to, we have created separations that have us living in fear of people who view the world differently than we do. We must look to the voices of the people who know better, and set out to do better.

George Clooney, along with people who carry that same spirit of awareness, have a fundamental understanding of energetic truth which drives them to support the overall growth of the world. He understands that personalities and personal preferences stand in the way of true cooperation at this point. The simple framework he laid out asked that we listen, and then make choices based on what we believe. There are no rules for the situation we are in. Nothing to compare it to. There is only an opportunity to forge a different path forward. 

Unconcerned about his reputation, or his Hollywood status, George Clooney was willing to speak the words that so many people were unwilling or unable to acknowledge within themselves. He called us out and asked us to look at where we are headed. He asked us if we were really okay with the status quo. He asked us to take a look inside and remind ourselves what is important, personally.  This message applies for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and all other affiliations.  What kind of citizen are we? Do we believe we can have an effect on what happens around us? OR do we go along with what seems easy, inevitable, or unlikely to change? As a country, we have changed rapidly in the past four years. As we reinvent the landscape of  our presidential election in a short amount of time, I hope that we can all take Clooney’s advice and listen. I know that is a serious longshot, but I’m not afraid to hope that one day we all remember how closely we are connected, even when we fundamentally disagree with each other.