A younger woman friend was lamenting the absence of female role models for women like herself and this set me thinking: Do we really need role models? How do role models work? Who would be a role model for happiness?
This lead to other questions: Is there a difference between a role model and a person who inspires us? If there is, what is it?
The Dalai Lama sprang to mind as a role model for happiness. He has written about happiness and exemplifies the ongoing practice of happiness in his struggle for the human rights of the people of his home country, Tibet.
"I believe happiness comes from kindness ... Through kindness ... mutual understanding and through mutual respect we will get peace, we will get happiness, and we will get genuine satisfaction."
Dalai Lama 1963
But what about female role models for happiness? Mother Teresa came to mind. Her face (as does the face of the Dalai Lama) radiates the inner happiness and joy of her life of service to suffering humanity.
Both these people live (or lived in the case of Mother Teresa) lives that are extremely practical in different ways. I’ll come back to that on another occasion.
Now you may or may not agree that the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are role models for happiness but it’s hard to see how they could be role models for my younger friend in her position as a mother whose principal life responsibility is the care of her two-year old son.
Which brings me back to the first question, ‘Does she really need a role model?’ My immediate response is, ‘No’. What she needs is to allow herself to be inspired by her own inner wisdom.
We all have our own inner wisdom, our gut feelings, our self-referenced guidance. Different people may refer to it by different names. And there is great pressure on us to ignore that inner wisdom in favour of going with the crowd (whoever the ‘crowd’ may be – family, friends, social groupings, political parties … ).
My friend – as I see it – is courageously and actively co-creating her own life with her son on a day-to-day basis. Like all of us, her particular life is set in a particular social context – networks of friends and associates – and she is creatively participating with them to create a satisfying and meaningful life for herself and her son. Everyday she is faced with new situations and new issues that are not amenable to more conventionally structured social norms. It is a lonely situation to be in at times and it is not surprising that she should look for role models who might encourage her and affirm her choices in life.
But what we tend to see and focus on outside of us, is often a projection of our own inner being. We are familiar with this in the context of blaming others and seeing the faults in those around us. The negative attributes we perceive in others are often just a projection of the negative attributes we have failed to be aware of in ourselves.
But what of positive attributes? When we recognize and appreciate a quality in another it is because it resonates with something already within us. When we emulate our chosen role models, we are engaged in bringing these qualities within ourselves into the light of our awareness.
Values are timeless but the way they are expressed is always contextualised within time. This means that the expression of qualities like compassions, devotion and commitment will be different in different ages and with different people.
It is a truism that the world is changing. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, pointed out that we cannot step in the same river twice. The water we stepped into yesterday – or even two minutes ago – has now flowed on elsewhere. The river may look much the same but it is not the same.
With the rapid rate of change in the world, is it surprising that we look around and perceive a lack of role models? Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. When we have the courage to be the change then we are our own role models.
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