Now Is Your Chance
My Preface: I am a sad person. I am often an angry
person. I often feel helpless and useless. I feel everything too deeply. I see
the mess we have made on this earth, how it affects my life, the lives of millions,
and my mind is encompassed with a daily darkness that is a part of my very
identity. Enough said.
I feel great redemptive value and intrinsic worth
when I can make a difference, however small, in this matter of a failed world. We
are the only creatures that have the ability to create utopia, and yet for
thousands of years we have moved ever farther away from this ideal. Instead, we
have become the supreme creators of destruction, avarice, and
self-gratification. Why? Did it or does it need to be this way? Are we so worthless
that as a species, self-importance is all we are really good at? I hope not.
Far too many people think they will change the world
by aggressive tactics. Politics have become (maybe always were) the dirtiest of
deeds, but unlike the AC/DC, (and Joan Jett) song(s), they are not done “…dirt
cheap.” Political parties have become more than they were ever intended to be.
National pride has become an excuse for exclusivity and chest-thumping.
This “We are number one attitude” began at the
international level, and has infiltrated the national political scene. Sadly,
our country and political parties are now old enough to have drawn deep lines
in the sand. Your political affiliation has become more of a personal, defining
characteristic than it was ever meant to be—Liberal, Conservative, American…what
about Human Being? What about citizen of the world? Hmm…too busy bickering?
Probably.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “The whole world is like the
human body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole
body. Rot in one part must inevitably poison the whole system. Let us,
therefore, cease to think in terms of the whole country.”
I think Gandhi was saying we need to look at
humanity and the world as a whole, as one giant symbiotic thing that needs
every part to be whole, even down to the tiniest of things.
We need to change our personal identifiers with our
self-constructed egos. Let us change the world. I am tired of our little
home-grown/made issues—I am more interested in the issues that, to me, matter
more: hunger, slavery, human trafficking, poverty, greed, preventable disease,
and war.
How can we help? Below are a few ideas, but first it
begins inside. Let go of the ego. There is no number one, it is not you, it is
not me, it is not America, and it is 7 billion of us.
Make a difference; now is your chance.
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