So there’s been another mass shooting. And another. And another. A bunch of old white men voted to defund Planned Parenthood and deprive basic healthcare for millions of women. Several multinational corporations tucked away more billions of dollars offshore, refusing to pay taxes, and putting at risk all the public systems so necessary to each of us.
Everywhere we look things seem unsustainable, upside down, and broken beyond repair. Things like climate change, health care, and religious wars, or Wall Street, Monsanto, and the amount of time we spend on Facebook. People everywhere continue to fear and hate other people, cultures, beliefs, or really anything they don’t understand.
Meanwhile, the majority of us are just trying to make rent and remember our passwords.
Most of us want to believe in a better world. We want to believe it is possible to find happiness. To live peaceful lives. To laugh easily and more often. We want to believe that self-empowerment is possible. That all the quotes from the spiritual masters are true. That the lives we imagine for ourselves are real and possible. And that we can build a better world.
We want to make good on our resolutions to meditate regularly, to do more yoga, and to spend more time giving back to our communities. We want to be better citizens of the world. Or, maybe we’d just like to make it through the day without yelling. Whatever our goals, we want to empower ourselves to make real and lasting changes, and to inspire others to do the same. Whatever our ideals, we really want to figure out a way to help make the world a better place to live.
But we haven’t got the slightest idea where to start.
Like looking at a tangle of Christmas lights the size of a beach ball, without any visible beginning or end. Or staring into an open box of 5,000 puzzle pieces depicting Dalmatians in a snow storm. It all seems insurmountable. Beyond our reach. Above our pay grades.
And then there’s this voice in our heads that keeps whispering that all our hopes for a better world are born of fairy tales. That the real world is nothing like the world we imagine. That it is time to grow up and accept that life is little more than struggle and heartbreak. And after a while, we start to listen. And we start to believe that the voice is right.
Relax. At best the voice is only half right.
If we are paying attention, we probably know the world is light and dark. Possibly exactly half of each. But I don’t know if there’s any way to measure this. And like your cereal box, it might be based upon weight, not volume. The thing is, whichever one we’re looking at usually happens to eclipse a realistic view of the other. And so we end up with a skewed perspective of what is real.
Yes, the world is a messy place, filled with all variant gradations of gray. Which somehow makes it harder and easier to navigate. What is important in starting to fix the world is acknowledging that maybe it doesn’t need fixing.
What do you mean doesn’t need fixing?
What I mean is, it could be that the world is as Anaïs Nin reminded us it was, when she said, We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. Or it could be like Robert Pirsig’s explanation that, We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world. So maybe it isn’t the world that needs fixing, but our view of it.
Or maybe it really is that broken. And maybe we just need to let the old world die. Let it crumble and fall at our feet. And we build a new one in its place. Brick by brick. Word by word. Breath by breath. But still there is the question of where to start?
We can start by acknowledging the light.
By standing in its glow as much as possible. By letting it illuminate us and our paths. By tending to our own sparks, feeding them, and keeping them burning. Then we can look around us at the fires of others. We can notice when theirs have gone out. Because, let’s be honest, that happens to all of us. But with just a touch of our light, we can bring their fires back to life.
So we pass the torch. And we light and relight. And we understand there are such things as rain and wind and green wood. And so we stay awake and keep watch over each other’s fires.
And we also acknowledge the dark.
Because we need it, too. Because otherwise there would be nothing but surgery lights. And who could live like that? Not me. I wear sunglasses when it’s cloudy outside. I’m not saying we need to embrace acts of violence. But we need to understand and accept that rage and confusion live inside each of us.
And I’m not saying to wallow in despair, but to acknowledge that there is beauty in the dark. And that the darkness and the light need one another. And because without their tension, there would be no story. Without clouds all the colors wash away.
And then what?
We believe. That’s what. And we act on our beliefs. And we keep imagining what the new world can look like. And we keep building it.
Dream by dream. Word by word. Breath by breath. Spark by spark.
Because this is how we make something real. Not by despairing or complaining or protesting. But by imagining. And by putting pen to paper. Words to voice. Hands to clay.
Nice.