I am moved tonight having just watched a CNN documentary called Her Name Was Steven, the story of Largo, Florida mayor Steve Stanton who very publicly changed from a man to a woman in 2007. Before the film began, CNN also interviewed a person who had undergone the same transition. I did not get the last name, but she had gone from David to Donna. Donna gave the interview. She was as articulate, eloquent, sincere, heartful, grounded and intelligent.

About a year ago I also saw a very moving Barbara Walters special that interviewed children who inside always knew that they were a different gender than their bodies. In most cases their parents could see it from the earliest ages also. When I look into the eyes and hear the stories of the people who live with this and those who love them, I am profoundly humbled by what I see and experience. I can barely imagine the courage it takes to be them. In each of the cases, the heart of the person interviewed has been obviously clear and sincere. These are persons confronted at an unimaginable level with how extremely complex humans are and the psyche is. In their private situations they are having to deal with huge forces of judgment, misunderstanding and intolerance on a daily basis. If their minds were in charge they could not begin to work this out. They have to be listening to their hearts. The heart’s intelligence is so far superior to that of the mind, and is so little translated into the mind due to our neglect of it.

I find people who listen to their hearts at such a level, and who face their destinies knowing they have no honest alternative, deeply inspiring. The people that I witnessed tonight are no less to me than the Rosa Parks’, Nelson Mandela’s, Martin Luther King’s of a different issue that challenges our hubris and intolerance as a species. Listening them helps me listen to everything more deeply.