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“I step out of the Ordinary, I can feel my Soul ascending! Make that break for Freedom - what
have you done today to make you feel Proud?”
These are inspirational lyrics from UK artist Heather Small’s song Proud from the year 2000. To
the surprise of next to no one, it quickly became an anthem for LGBT+ Pride festivals
worldwide. When was it first called Pride? Best we can gather, that became the word that
stuck in 1971 and originated through a Minnesotan - like me (I was born in Minnesota in 1977).
To give a bit of historical context, the Stonewall uprising took place on June 28, 1969 and while
it was by no means the first or second time the LGBT+ community stood up to the powers that
be, it was the moment that resonated and lasted globally. Why PRIDE though? After all, isn’t it
one of the so-called 7 Deadly Sins (yes, yes it is)?
The origin of the word PRIDE has a powerful secondary meaning that applies here: “personal honor.” We might alter the lyrics above to ask, “what have you done today to honor yourself... and by extension, your community?” That just doesn’t rhyme as well. Pride also means a “love of display” - think, a peacock spreading its tail feathers, or, wait for it, a rainbow. Pride then has a healthy, resonant meaning in addition to the one we may think of firstly, “unreasonable self-esteem.” Certainly those who oppose us as LGBT+ would say that any honor we give ourselves and others is unreasonable. They call us defective, evil, and broken. My loves, you are NOT broken. You are Whole. Your Wholeness, our Wholeness needs only to be remembered. That is why Pride is so important.
Going back to the song lyrics, may it not be lost on us as humans first (whether you identify as
LGBT+ or not) and as writers second that “step(ping) out of the Ordinary” is the basis for every
single story ever told. Including YOUR story. We have each one of us been faced with
moments where something shifts and what was (the Ordinary) disappears and nothing is the
same afterwards...WE are not the same afterwards. The Ordinary has transformed into the
Extraordinary if we only say YES to its invitation. On the other side of any Fear is Transcendence.
Perhaps this is reflective of “coming out” - of coming into the You that you have always been.
Not what you were told to be, or told you were - someone “accepted” and “acceptable” (to
which I ask, “for whom? for what?”) but the you beneath the cloak of culture, family, religion,
society at large. It takes a great deal of courage to be You and that deserves to be celebrated,
daily. Not just for a month of Pride. Pride is all day; every day. Take a big heaping spoonful of
Self Honor in who you are, in who you are becoming, first thing in the morning and repeat often
throughout each and every day!
I personally wrestled with accepting myself as a gay man for better part of a solid year - one of
intense pain and anguish. A key thing that helped was an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times
(circa 2000 or so) in which the writer said something equivalent to if not exactly this:
“...it is hard then to be what you are, when everyone and everything around you tells you that
you are wrong and it could really cost you all you know. In the end though, I suspect it would
be much harder to be something, someone that you are not.”
I will close with a brief story that illustrates all of this before leaving you all with a wonderful
challenge. In 2005, in a past work life, I was the manager of a large, weekend expo in NYC that
brought out thousands of attendees to show support for companies that displayed their acceptance for the LGBT+ community. Out of the 180+ businesses that attended were the FBI
and the CIA - doing job recruitment! Remember now, this was during the height of the Bush
administration, not exactly the most welcoming White House shall we say. When I asked the
FBI agent why they said an immediate “yes” to my invitation, he said, “we are looking for
individuals who are uncompromising in who they are, who live in integrity and wholeness...who
could never be blackmailed just for being themselves.”
My bit of a challenge to all of us brings us back to Proud’s lyrics:
“It’s never too late to try!
To Question is how to Grow! Do it Today!
I can feel my Spirit rising!”
What will you do, today, to make you feel PROUD?"