role models

i am thinking about routines and rock stars and the roles women play,
thinking of how women live today,
thinking of the ways she has tried to compete
in a man's world, with a man's gaze, made to feel incomplete
as if she were the proof of punishment ordained by the almighty
as if new ways of explaining the same questions pointed toward
the limitations of a dichotomy, rather than the infinity
that became more and more apparent as men looked out into the stars
and began observing.

because these feelings of inadequacy, these imposed perspectives
that seem only to repeatedly lead to disharmony--
we were so prone to blaming
which pleased the aristocracy, because it meant they could remain in their places
while we fought amongst ourselves,
created more and more things to die for or in the name of
or under the weight of social orders that always seemed to neglect us,
it is easy to find fault.
it is easy to find an enemy.
it is easy to identify the ways that we have not evolved.
and so we fail to use the collective power.

but we do not cower at the challenges we've embraced;
we demonstrate passionate hearts--
and it's only a matter of directing that energy toward revision
toward recreation, toward mythologies that better represent our
understanding.
yes, we need angels and heaven and all the shades thereof
we need science and medicine
we need education.
we need to stop perpetuating modes of destruction.

when was there last a simple story
an idea
that joined people
together,
that inspired people to act (or simply behave) with compassion?
to collectively participate in a paradigm shift that carries us past
the models of life
we still haven't learned to live with?