It's Not About You

“Please do not look to my life, but take me even as a lamppost on the road that indicates the way, but cannot walk the way itself.” Mohandas Gandhi

Looking back on the history of nonviolent movements, we often remember them with a single brilliant and brave leader, as if that individual alone inspired the movement. But that’s not how it usually happened. Many people are needed to make nonviolence succeed. Some people get recognized for their work, others do not. Individuals like Gandhi or Martin Luther King may get raised up, but they never accomplish their work alone.

A movement is built on a foundation of resistance that may be years, decades, or even centuries old. Leaders who get remembered usually stand on the work of those before them. Nonviolent transformation is a long, slow process, and the greatest leaders see themselves in service to the movement, not as the center of it.