Heart Revolution: When Our Image Becomes Their Currency

Captured by Mitchell Royel

Now Playing: SPARXX and Red Eyes by Alexx Mack (YouTube)

We’ve all felt it. That peculiar hollowness when someone’s eyes meet ours, but they’re looking through us, not at us. When our presence becomes their social currency. When our stories become their footnotes of enlightenment.

We are not your diversity statement. We are not your conscious capitalism badge. We are not your Instagram story of “doing good.” We are whole universes of complexity, contradiction, and divine light.

Truth bombs incoming, loves: People who leverage our image, our stories, our marginalized experiences for their goodwill campaigns are practicing a modern form of colonization. They’re mining our souls for their social profit margins.

Here’s what we know for sure: The bridge between exploitation and authentic connection isn’t built with good intentions—it’s built with humble surrender.

So how do we transmute these transactional relationships into the gold of true friendship?

The Alchemy of Authentic Connection

We start by honoring the sacred space between performance and presence. We recognize when we’re being invited to be someone’s token, someone’s proof of progressiveness, someone’s spiritual accessory.

We set boundaries like they’re prayers. Because they are.

We say: “I am not your teacher unless I’ve agreed to be. I am not your bridge to understanding unless I’ve volunteered for that holy work. I am not your absolution.”

And then we open to the possibility that transformation can happen—that the person who once saw us as a cultural souvenir might become someone who truly sees our soul.

The Bridge-Building Practice

We create connection through:

Naming the dynamic. “I notice that our relationship feels one-sided. I’m curious if you’re aware of how you’re engaging with my story/identity/experience.”

Offering invitations instead of education. “Would you like to join me at this event? Experience this with me? Stand beside me rather than stand for me?”

Recognizing our own participation. We too have used others as props in our enlightenment journey. We too have mistaken proximity for understanding.

When we share meals instead of microphones, when we exchange vulnerabilities instead of social validation, when we cry together about the state of the world instead of using each other to fix it—this is when the bridge becomes unnecessary because we’re finally standing on the same shore.

The most revolutionary act might be this: refusing to be anyone’s goodwill project while simultaneously refusing to close our hearts to the possibility that superficial connections can deepen into soul friendships.

We are not here to be your teachers, your healers, your diversity consultants.
But we are here to be your friends—if you’re brave enough to meet us in that tender, equal space where neither of us is saving the other.

That’s where the real light gets in.

Where are you leveraging someone else’s image for your own goodwill? Where are you being leveraged? And where might you build a bridge of authenticity that honors both shores?

With fierce love and fire,

Mitchell+Ryder