Friday reflection
Obedient/disobedient
A woman sitting at a table with coffee and a laptop, looking down at her small dog, who is looking up at her
Today I want to talk about obedience, and disobedience, and how we use each of them in service of our freedom as women, all inspired by an incredible event I attended last night.
The event was hosted by The Cru, a wonderful organization founded by Tiffany Dufu, that dedicates itself to helping women meet their life goals, and helping companies retain them. (I just checked out Tiffany’s website and holy hell, her homepage rings my heart’s bells: “I know what my tombstone will say: She got to as many women as she could.”)
The Cru Live: How to Face Your Fears and Find Your Voice, with Tiffany Dufu and Luvvie Ajayi Jones
Anyway, the event featured a conversation between Tiffany and the one, the only, Luvvi Ajayi Jones, multimedia entrepreneur; long-time blogger extraordinaire; author of Professional Troublemaker and Rising Troublemaker; and creator of so many other things — and I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much. I was gobbling up every single word (and writing most of them in my brand new journal, with a silky sketching pencil that glides sumptuously across the page). The two of them: Tiffany’s thoughtful interviewing and reflections, the way she told everyone who submitted a question in the chat, “I see you, [name]” before posing their question to Luvvie; and Luvvie just oozing authenticity, spirituality, and wisdom. Oof.
If this were a medicine that could be bottled I would drink it every single day.
Which brings me to this week’s reflection.
The Quote
“I listen and am obedient to what makes sense.”
- Luvvie Ajayi Jones, as transcribed by me, last night - I may not be quoting her word for word
I can’t remember if Luvvie was explicitly talking about listening to herself, or the universe, or God, when she said this, but the feeling I got was that she was talking about intuition, trusting ourselves, and being OBEDIENT to ourselves.
My reflections
I find this to be such a powerful, powerful notion, considering the toxic extent to which the world demands women’s obedience in so many ways; as Naomi Wolf observed, for example, "A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
In this context, this notion of inverting and disrupting obedience so it’s ourSELVES we’re obedient to, feels profoundly right to me.
The world needs more women to be obedient to ourselves, and disobedientto the forces that would keep us quiet and small; it needs us to be dangerous, as one of my role models, Pat Mitchell, puts it (watch her TED Talk, Dangerous Times Call for Dangerous Women). And, the world needs us to get loud, even if it makes us uncomfortable (see: my post about how niceness traps white women in complicit silence), and even if it makes other people uncomfortable; we need to get loud in service of our visions and our hearts and our spirits, all of which fundamentally yearn to connect with other people.
And also: Listening. The power of listening, to ourselves. At one point, another attendee asked if Luvvie had any daily habits that helped her be at her best, and she went on a hilarious riff about how she is not the up-at-5, drink-alkaline-water-and-do-yoga type, but what struck me is that her daily habit is listening to herself.
The Questions
Thinking about all of the above, I invite you to reflect and to share in the comments:
How does disobedience serve us as women? What about obedience?
In what ways are you disobedient? In what ways do your words or actions go against the grain? If our ideas go against the grain, but we don’t express them, is that still disobedience?
In what ways are you obedient? In what contexts do you comply, or silence yourself, even when it takes you out of being in integrity with yourself? Who benefits from your obedience? On the flip side, in what ways are you, or have you been, obedient to yourself, in your life?
Wishing you a day — and, ultimately, a life, but let’s start with today — of listening to and being obedient to who you truly are.
I’ll leave you with a little more wisdom from Luvvie:
“We will ruffle feathers. We might be the villains in a few people’s stories. We might even blow up a few bridges. But our worth is not based on how much we acquiesced to the people we knew. The goal is to betray ourselves less.
So, be kind but take no shit.”
- Luvvie Ajayi Jones
You are a mighty force -
Amanda
P.S. Who is someone whose disobedience you admire? Tell us about her in the comments. This is your space to connect with other deep, smart, mission-driven women; and it’s a space to practice sharing your ideas beyond the confines of your beautiful mind.