Moment of Self Recognition

“A woman doctor had made a reservation for herself and a party of friends at the Plaza’s Oak Room, a public restaurant that was maintained as a male-only bastion at lunchtime on the grounds that female voices might disturb men’s business meetings. When this woman was stopped at the Oak Room door for being the wrong gender of “Dr.,” as she knew she would be, her lunch group of distinguished feminists turned into a spirited sidewalk picket line and held a press conference they had called in advance.

Now, I also had been invited to join this protest—and refused. In New York as in most cities, there were many public restaurants and bars that either excluded women altogether or wouldn’t serve “unescorted ladies” (that is, any woman or group of women without the magical presence of one man). Certainly, I resented this, but protesting it in the Oak Room, a restaurant too expensive for most people, male or female, seemed a mistake…

All the excuses of my conscious mind couldn’t keep my unconscious self from catching the contagious spirit of those women who picketed the Oak Room. When I faced the hotel manager again, I had glimpsed the world as if women mattered. By seeing through their eyes, I had begun to see through my own. It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view.

Much later, I recognized it in “Revolution,” the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman—and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze—as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. “All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people,” Kapuscinski writes.

“They should begin with a psychological chapter—one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process—sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock—demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that, there would be no revolution.” But even then, this moment in a hotel lobby was my first inkling that there is a healthier self within each of us, just waiting for encouragement. It’s such a common experience of unexpected strength that we have ordinary phrases for it:

“I surprised myself,” or “In spite of myself.” In The Red and the Black, Stendhal called this inner self “a little friend.” In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Celie writes letters to a strong friend called God, but she is also writing to the strength within herself. Children create imaginary playmates, and athletes, musicians, and painters strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Meditation, prayer, creativity - all these are ordinary ways of freeing an inner voice. It’s a feeling of “clicking in” when that self is recognized, valued, discovered, esteemed—as if we literally plug into an inner energy that is ours alone, yet connects us to everything else.

To put it another way: I began to understand that self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.”

~ Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem
Gloria Marie Steinem (born 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, and social political activist, who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the American feminist movement. She accumulates her years of wisdom in this book about creating a revolution within yourself that echoes out into the universe.

In 2015, she joined the thirty leading international women peacemakers and became an honorary co-chairwoman of 2015 Women's Walk For Peace In Korea with Mairead Maguire. The group's main goal is to advocate disarmament and seek Korea's reunification. It will be holding international peace symposiums both in Pyongyang and Seoul in which women from both North Korea and South Korea can share experiences and ideas of mobilizing women to stop the Korean crisis.

The group's specific hope is to walk across the 2-mile wide Korean Demilitarized Zone that separates North Korea and South Korea which is meant to be a symbolic action taken for peace in the Korean peninsular suffering for 70 years after its division at the end of World War II. It is especially believed that the role of women in this act would help and support the reunification of family members divided by the split prolonged for 70 years.

Steinem is currently an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.