What Can Dr. Martin Luther King Teach Us About Disruption And Progress?

Looking back on this Dr. Martin Luther King Day, I thought about how Dr. King was, in many ways, a disruptor of an unhealthy status quo. I think those of us who didn’t live through the civil rights movement can, at times, underestimate just how disruptive it was. While Dr. King’s disruption affected the progress of the nation, his actions show just how necessary disruptions are even for personal change and growth. 

Martin Luther King Jr. And Disruption

Social environments, like school, the workplace and families, all have a standardized way of working. But working and being healthy, decent and supporting everyone to grow are two different things. In this respect, Jim Crow “worked”–it was an organization of societal rules that functioned with a sort of equilibrium. We're all familiar with the comment, "That's just the way things are done, don't go messing it up." However, whom Jim Crow served and at what cost was profoundly inequitable and predicated on a false premise that separate could be equal.

When King, the SPLC and SNCC began protesting, it wasn’t just white Southerners who took notice. African-Americans, even as aware as they were of the inequity, also knew trying to change Jim Crow and segregation would cause a lot of grief. Even in light of profound suffering, African-Americans were participants in an economy. To change the rules, they risked not only violence, but also a disruption in economic stability (equilibrium), however unstable that stability was.

And they were right. African-Americans and white activists were murdered, Black churches burned. King knew that even with a methodology of non-violence, blood would be shed. We celebrate the heroic stories from the movement, but the upheaval came with serious suffering. This may seem like a hyperbolic metaphor for personal growth, but we have to appreciate the significant disruption changing one’s life inevitably demands.

Disruptions In Daily Life

Quitting drinking, repairing a relationship with your kid, getting out of debt, or breaking out of a toxic relationship, these things are also incredibly hard and inevitably deeply disruptive. Patients talk to me a lot about feeling stuck around an issue or life in general–leaving a job, tired of a routine, not taking good care of oneself or a relationship that's gotten stale. Without disruption, growth and becoming unstuck is much harder.

Disruption can be generative. It's good for our bodies and our brains. We have to use all of our faculties–our bodies, cognitive skills, and our people skills differently and develop new skills along with way. For example, expectant parents suddenly discover they're having triplets. Guaranteed disruption! You can't pull that off without changing just about everything. In the end, you learn to operate on less sleep, make more money and be efficient and organized where you weren't before. All sorts of things that may not have happened with just one kid (at least not to that extreme).

Granted, while disruption can be sought out, it can also come in the form of a surprise. This includes a bad surprise, which is also known as trauma. When we experience physical or emotional trauma, we have to do a new kind of thing we've never done before, which can mean healing the part of us that has been harmed.

How Can Disruption Help Growth?

Physiologic balance is an innate need–to walk upright we need a system for keeping stable on our two feet. So too for our emotional lives–we find a way to make all of the intricate parts of the system work together. But just because there is balance doesn't mean that balance is necessarily good. If someone is looking to change one or a few parts of his or her life, it's clear things aren't working. But you can't change one piece without disrupting the balance. In other words, tackling one thing at a time is actually impossible.

So first, stop trying to change just one thing. In many cases, I think people often make the mistake trying to change too little. Maybe there's one issue that's a priority, but recognize that, in order for that change to be successful, you're going to have to make a mess of things. Similarly, take seriously that changing things is going to mess things up, and not always in a good way.

And finally, recognize that in crisis or tragedy, there is opportunity precisely because it’s disruptive. Even painful situations like going through a divorce, losing a close friend or getting laid off can provide opportunity for growth. This, however, doesn’t negate the pain of the disruption.

But when a disruption comes at us that wasn’t of our choosing, we need to give up the idea of getting everything back to normal. Not only because there is no "back to normal," but also because in trying to do so, you'd be missing the opportunity that's right in front of you. Everything is a big disrupted mess–now's your chance to look at your life differently and to get creative. As Dr. King said, "The line of progress is never straight.”