I was always a solution-oriented kid. I believe that when one grows up in a divorced home one tends to be that way. I wanted very much to know why things are broken and wanted even more to fix them. The constant question in my mind while growing up was, “how can we change society to avoid all this mess, all this hurt?”. As I got older (and hopefully wiser) I realized that my grand, overriding prescriptions and solutions for the whole world was weaved with fear and that instead of helping my solutions would invariably perpetuate more hurt. The facts is, I soon found out that every prescription I came up with would invariable bring about more misery. Of course, yes, some of my grand societal solutions might benefit from these prescriptions, but a good amount of them would not, certainly not everyone….and that made them all non-solutions.
I no longer try to change others. In my spiritual path, that is never and will never be my goal. Let me explain, having grown up super sensitive person, tuned to all forms of energy, from how much energy we have, to who empowers us, all the way down to what types of people depletes the energy we may have, etc.; I have always seen everything through a lens of which activities empowers me vs. which activities depletes me. Wisely, as I aged, I would always choose the activities which empowered me and move away from anything that depleted me. (When I say empower I mean activities that bring me joy, light, energy, happiness, laughter. I don’t mean power as in a ‘power over another’. NO, that is not what I am talking about here.) Anyway, back to the topic. Most solutions people put forth as “solutions” to help the world completely depletes us and does not take into account the fact that aside from saving the world humans also need other activities in their life to lead a full, happy existence. Some of these solutions are simply not sustainable. This is because the expectation is very often one that requires 24x7 effort. This, while noble, can be exhausting, and in most cases purely anti-productive to our end goal. Right now, I could pick any number of causes to champion all at once but very quickly my health, family or my sanity would suffer. The juggling of many efforts is too intense and it does not allow our bodies and our being to self-replenish, making such efforts unsustainable. Yes, while I very much care about many, many causes can I possibly make a marked difference if I try to juggle them all, at once? No. I say this because too often, I feel that very much in society I am tacitly expected to fight for all causes, in every way, at all times. No matter how much care, this is not humane or possible over time….it’s not only sustainable physically, not or emotionally, but it also makes zero dents on the very causes we are trying to affect. There has got to be a better way.
Yet, the question remains, how DO WE change the world? Simple, one spiritual leader I once heard speak said that we change the world when we tackle the things we hate with the things we love. This was excellent and simple and more importantly, doable. Will Harris, was his name. He is “an international corporate trainer, speaker and humanitarian who has impacted over 2 million lives throughout the world. His exact phrase was, "Use what you love, to fight what you hate." But how do we pick what we hate to know what to fight against? And isn’t hate a strong word? We pick what we hate by choosing from the varied experiences from our own lives and churning and turning them around to energize our resolve. We very literally turn around our misery and use it to inform us in the best solutions for the tiny portion of life in which you can personally speak to. In my case, in my own life, I hate child sexual abuse, I hate the idea of children growing up without parents, I hate seeing children who do not get to enjoy their unique and precious childhoods as all children should. This matter is very important to me. Important enough that I have made raising my children be my top priority. Important enough to me that I chose the absolute most excellent father for my two children. My children are my life and if ever given the choice I would give my life to my children, willingly, happily, no questions asked. You see, these causes, the ones that derive from our own past hurt matter more personally, more than others because we know very intimately what is needed within these very issues. I should add that In no way am I saying I do not care about any number of other causes, I am simply saying that with work, kids, dinners, friends and family we have a very finite amounts of anergy and we need to choose our fights strategically. A perfect example of this is when I lived in DC and was involved in outreach for public schools. I attended so many meetings a week that I lost touch with my health, my kids never saw me anymore and soon I found I could not sustain any meaningful commitment to either my family or the cause. I might have been able to continue, but the efforts to both were weak and poultry and I had to reassess.
Another aspect of this which I wanted to address, to drill my point even further, was the amazing benefit of helping others in person. I am studying The Cognomovement method lately, in it, there is a lot of talk about our bodies as holding this invisible energy that expands beyond the physical borders of our skin walls by several feet. There are lots and lots of mentions in the videos on the channel about how we affect the people immediately around us when we walk through doors, and the reality of this affect that is very real and that is palpable even before we open our mouthes. The effectiveness we have on others is greatly increased in their presence. Therefore, it’s logical to assume that it’s most effective to help people locally, one-on-one, than it would be, for example, writing a random check to a charity halfway across the planet. To conclude, we can change the world as we have always wanted, yet, we are most effective when we do it face-to-face, one human at a time.
But don’t be disheartened dear ones, this is by no means a limitation to our big dream of saving the world. It’s quite the opposite, I fully believe that is exactly what we are meant to do. Know that no interactions amongst humans is too small. Every interaction matters. Sometimes even a short phrase can change the course of our lives forever, causing a string of seemingly magical events we could have never predicted. In my own life this has happened more times than I can could.Here is one example. I remember a time I went to therapy back before I met my husband, I was trying to break up with a toxic girlfriend I had been with for 8 years but she kept threatening to harm herself if I left her. I was desperate, the stress was making me ill. I loved this person very much but we had grown apart and I needed my sanity, I needed solid ground and I had lost myself. Somewhere in the session the therapist uttered the words, “You are not responsible for her”. With just those 6 words she changed the course of my life forever. Those words went into my soul and did their magical work. I soon broke up, moved to a group house where I met my amazing, sweet and wise husband whom I now have a family with. This woman, this therapist, quite literally saved my life, saved my sanity, set me on a course for healing and I’m sure she does not even know it to this day. You see, the huge, life-changing moments are encapsulated in tiny little seeds such as these, seeds of a mere 6 words. For others, it might be a seed of a kindness, a seed of a touch, or a hug, or maybe even a sense of unwavering warmth, to some it may even be even more subtle, such as the seed of patience, or just quiet acceptance can speak volumes.
Therefore, we do not need to leave our home and families to go out to try to save the world. We can save the world right here from our jobs, with the very mundane people we work with, we can save the world while we are out driving, with the way we address conflicts, the way we are present with the ones in our very lives, or with the way we address that very human we don’t know in the elevator. There are endless and infinite seeds of opportunities to save the world in every interaction, every look, every smile, every word. You’ve got this.