We All Make A Difference
Be the Change You Wish to See in the World
– Gandhi –
So many people go through their lives oblivious to the fact they make a difference. In many cases it is a positive difference, a smile, a look of encouragement, holding back what may be needed to be heard, understanding the person is not ready.
Recently while travelling on a train in Sydney an indigenous man befriended me on the platform. We chatted and shared a laugh about his woman problems as we travelled towards our destination. On arriving at my stop he blessed me in the name of Jesus and we departed friends that may never meet again. That man’s actions still brings a smile to my face. Drunk? Yes! Yet underneath the mask of pain – another fellow traveller on the journey through the maze of life.
The Myth or Lie that our actions do not count is potentially the greatest challenge or hurdle we face to mature or evolve into balanced human beings.
Is it some great cosmic conspiracy to hold us down and enslave us in our own negative view of ourselves?
Or some evil plan to mechanise humanity, turning us into robots?
It may be closer to the truth that we are working on faulty input and it is time to clean the filters, defrag the hard-drive and reload the operating system.
When we repress or suppress our own feelings and actions, we set up bio feedback loops that are strengthened and hardwired into our systems and our lifestyles. We make mistakes or others judge that we have and the loop begins, our subconscious is always looking to validate the input it is receiving. Once validated it is stored in the facts files and we keep adding to it.
We can live our lives in this chaotic vortex or we can recognise that some areas of our lives are not working the way we would like. This is where most people stop, they do not go to the next step and begin to decide what they would like their lives to be like. In a world where critical thinking can lead to excommunication from family, friends and society, the weight of fear is sometimes too daunting a task to undertake. Conformity is always the easiest option. Sometimes the real courage comes from looking and seeing what is not working and then, making the necessary steps, create a new story, a new and better way of being.
We can be in the deepest hole, weighed down with pain, suffering from deep despair, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, undeservabilty and unforgivability, yet from the very bowels of hell itself we can change our lives. Our redemption is always a thought away.
Heaven or Hell are metaphoric states of being, we can make decisions and take actions that drive us in one direction or the other. You have probably heard the old North American Indian story of the grandfather and the grandson speaking of the two wolves within. One is the good wolf, the other , the bad. The light and dark of our animalistic selves. The message from this story is simple, the one that wins is the one you feed, the one that gets the attention.
Most of us will never make change on the level of a Mandela, or a Gandhi, yet in saying that, a simple smile to a stranger may change their lives. We will always hear when we have done something wrong, and rarely when we do something right. In the current world we are presented with so many opportunities to make a difference, to stand up and be counted. We do not need to join a radical group and protest, that rarely works. We do not need to make a big song and dance about some truth that we have uncovered.
In our own way, with the decisions we make we can, each and every one of us bring change, sometimes it is in our own lives, our families or our social group. Each positive change counterbalances the actions of those who wish us harm. We may not see it at first, but each step moves us to a more just and fair society.
To give up being the victim, to surrender of limitations and false sense of low self worth is an opportunity to do something good in this world.
It is not great acts that change the world, it is the multiplying effect
of ordinary people doing extraordinary things – gracefully day by day.
