When I was 7, and the NASA space program was in full gear, I announced to my kindergarten teacher that I wanted to be an astronaut. She informed me that “Girls are not astronauts. Only boys can join the program.” So I decided I wanted to be an airline pilot. Only to find out that girls could not be airline pilots either. That too was the realm of men. So, undeterred, I decided that I would be a stewardess and proceeded to find out all I could about what it would take to land that job. However, by my 11th birthday I was too tall to be a stewardess. They had a height restriction and I had surpassed it.
There were a lot of things I couldn’t do, because I was a girl in the 1970s. A tall girl.
In 1973 Billie Jean King did the unthinkable. She competed head-to-head with a man. In sports. And won. That tennis match wasn’t just part of the conversation about equality. It changed the conversation about equality. It changed the way I saw myself, the way I defined both my opportunities and my barriers. They were obstacles, but they were not walls. They could be gotten over, with enough effort, skill, and perseverance. Because if King could do the undoable, so could I.
I got to see King again today at the annual luncheon for the Chicago Foundation for Women. And once again, she made me see the world differently than I had. She made many great points and repeatedly garnered the thunderous applause of the crowd of 2000.
But one point rang out for me as a quintessential truth. We need to see what is possible to know what is possible. At the age of 12, King decided (after only her second tennis lesson) that she was going to be the greatest tennis player on Earth. At 13 she went to go see Althea Gibson play because, as King explained, she needed to see great to know what it took to be great. Gibson showed her what she needed to work toward.
King has said in previous speeches that you need to “see it to be it.” She personally lived that motto. And today she demonstrated to an audience, many too young to remember her game against Bobby Riggs, that stories matter. Stories change people’s expectations and thus change their lives.
We need to be the story tellers, the story creators, the story promoters. If we are not the subject of stories of inspiration, we can be the narrator. We need to take every opportunity to shine the light on the people who are knocking down obstacles, overcoming barriers, breaking through, and doing something new, better, or different that it has been done before.
So today I was inspired to reinvest in being the story teller. To shine the light on the barrier breakers. To actively mentor, encourage and support those whose lives I can touch and whose stories I can tell, because the ripple effect of their stories will touch countless others.
That is how we change the world. Again.