How We Change the World

I think we often imagine changing the world as something big. I picture movements, protests, policies, and revolutions. We imagine change as something that happens loudly, publicly, and all at once. And sometimes it does.

Most people I’ve met want to do good. They want to leave the world knowing they made it a better place, but that can feel overwhelming.

What can I possibly do to make the world better? And more than that, how am I supposed to do it when it feels like there is barely enough time to live, work, and regulate myself?

It is easy to feel trapped by that question. That feeling of being just a girl, so small compared to the world and all the change that needs to happen. From a macro perspective, it is easy to feel helpless and insignificant.

But I am starting to believe that change also happens in quieter ways.

It happens when a person becomes more authentic, more honest. It happens when someone stops performing the script handed down to them and starts to discover that they are more than just a character.

A person becoming themselves changes the world around them.

Not always dramatically. Not always immediately. Not always in ways they get to see. But it changes something in the climate of their community and environment.

About three years ago, something that had been lying dormant in me started to push forward. After about a year of reflection and self-exploration, I came out as gay.

At 32 years old, I was confused and a little surprised to come to the conclusion that I was a lesbian. I was even more surprised by how much better my quality of life became when I allowed myself to live authentically.

As I continue to get to know myself more honestly, everyone around me gets to know me more honestly too.

My coming out did not only change my relationship with myself. It also changed the conditions around me: my relationships, my family dynamics, and my understanding of certain parts of society.

For my mom, it meant queerness was no longer an abstract idea. It was not just a political topic, a cultural debate, or something happening somewhere else. It was her daughter. It was someone she loved.

That does not mean everything became easy. It does not mean every bias disappeared overnight. She has, at times, struggled to understand and accept me for who I am at my core. But it created an opportunity for growth. It asked my mom to look more closely at what she believed, what she had been taught, and what she still needed to unlearn.

Because bias can survive more easily in the abstract. It becomes harder to keep an old belief untouched when someone you love is standing inside the category you were taught to look down on.

I know that my own growth journey has been uncomfortable and very hard at times. I have had to start understanding the systems and beliefs I internalized, and I can only imagine that my mom is facing similar challenges as she gets to know her daughter again at 35.

When we live more honestly, we create new conditions for the people around us. We become evidence that another way of living is possible. We challenge assumptions people may not have known they were carrying. We give others a chance to ask different questions.

This is one of the ways we change the world.

Not by becoming perfect. Not by becoming palatable. Not by explaining ourselves well enough to be accepted by everyone. But by becoming real.

Our lives are connected. The choices we make ripple outward. The truths we claim create friction, permission, and possibility.

Someone else may see us and feel brave enough to start something new. Someone may question a belief they inherited. Someone may recognize a part of themselves they had buried.

We may never know all the ways our honesty changes the room. But it does.

I think we owe it to ourselves to discover who we are. And maybe, in some way, we owe it to the world too. Not because the world is entitled to us, but because a life lived honestly gives something back.

Maybe being yourself is a foundational way of changing the world.