Gil Scott-Heron said:
“A lot of times people see battles and skirmishes on TV and they say, ‘Ah ha, the revolution is being televised.’ No: the results of the revolution are being televised.
“The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown.
“What you see later on is the results of that; but the revolution, that change that takes place, will not be televised.” [recorded in 1982 at the Wax Museum, Washington, D.C., for the film Gil Scott-Heron: Black Wax.]
I once thought that first revolution, the one in my mind, would happen once, and then I would be done. But it hasn’t worked out that way. I keep seeing that there is another way of looking at things than the way I was shown: consumer goods are not so good; the free market is not free, it is both expensive and restrictive; media are called that because they mediate, they get in between you and the world; and the ultimate goal in life is not to be contented.
You need a dog. They understand contentment. It’s not equivalent to complacent (we humans get that wrong all the time), but rather a large view of the world, one that’s bigger than politics, economics, revolution. A view that just knows if you love, completely and fully, all will be well.
And then you need a horse. They are even more brilliant than dogs.