The Colour of Your Revolution: Humanisation of Humanself
Did you know that colours represent many revolutions?
Let’s think about the colours of revolutions today: yellow revolution of 1986 in the Philippines, the Rose Revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and 20the 04, the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine, the Purple Revolution of 2005 in Iraq, Colourful Revolution in Macedonia in 2016 and more.
However, claiming colours as a part of political identity is not limited to these public demonstrations. It goes back to the earlier revolutions such as 1789 and the colours of the new nation states’ flags. Are we flags, nations, identities or not? What does it mean a bare and shred human in an age where all even our lost humanity is politicised? Can one reclaim their humanity in protest of a world of indoctrinating nation states full of dehumanisation?
What colour is your revolution that makes you who you are? What colour is building yourself with patience, love, and dedication. Your body has its material colour. As your existence can’t be confined to your materiality so does the colour of you as was, as is, and as will be.
You can say that the colour of the ‘human’ revolution is in the color of light: that has none but all. The aim is to be and remain material yet achieve the light inside. This requires being both religious and secular, material and immaterial, having faith in ostensibly contradicting categories that were invented by modernist dichotomies.
The human soul is above and beyond the limits of a chronological and linear historical narrative. As the idea of progress proved to be defunct by ongoing conflict and selfishness in the history of humanity, idea of a linear time that will culminate in a better world is only a fallacy. We can learn about the past achievements of humanity once we are born and grow enough to understand history; however, there is no guarantee that learning about history is learning from history.
Same defaults and gifts of humanity continue to survive, cause it is also the source of wonder and brilliance. Only how to decide to use human capacity is an everyday decision. Thus, we can have a revolution in small steps in quotidian life and ostensibly basic and small decisions. Thus we live in the colours of our revolution.
How? The recipe is to remain faithful to values that are espoused by many traditions and philosophies that are summarised in the ten commandments. Easy to say, but if followed, it can lead to a revolution: the revolution of peace in hearts thus in the world.
The time of the human soul is cosmic and cyclical. It is like a spiral, follows the trajectory of the sun that also travels in a direction that is not linear but in the shape of a coil spring. It is in the most ordinary things: when you can, choosing not to lie, choosing to help, choosing to dedicate time and energy to you and others, being a human when you can choose not to. It is a revolution in the long run and the most effective revolution of all.
Why? Think of the aftermath of all revolutions. What changed? Equality, fraternity, and liberty have to happen inside to spread in the world. It begins liberating yourself in both body and soul. For that, one has to know how to liberate the soul. My headscarf is for me a rebellion against the confines of my material body, reminding me that I am made of both material and immaterial beings. It is a conscious act of reminding myself daily that I am a traveleller on earth and this is a part of the longer journey. But it is not enough, of course, I need to remind myself that I am not all mighty and powerful as a human, thus, occasionally I fast and deprive myself of food and water. Yet, that is not enough, either. I practice choosing virtue over benefit and pragmatic reciprocity in everyday life. It is not as easy as it sounds. If it were, we would not have had this many wars in history.
Full revolution is an ongoing battle inside human souls every day. However, you choose to have your revolution to be a human every day and better together. This is both an individual yet not lonely journey. Whole society and the zeitgeist is there too. How much we will allow them penetrate our colours is a choice albeit difficult to limit.
I wish you luck and dedication. I also wish to learn from your experience. We have a long way to achieve a revolution of humanization of humans.
