These days pretty much everyone I know feels that this world has turned into a complete nuthouse. There is a sense of disgust, resignation, doom and disappointment in the air, regardless where one travels to, in the Western World. “What is this world coming to,” people ask. And of course, this always implies that one has no other choice but to watch in silence whatever has befallen our planet.
Well, I personally feel that the source of all “evil” is the complete lack of understanding, compassion and self-awareness. Ego seems to run completely rampant in our great age of technology and science. Everyone is right and feels right as rain when spreading their “right opinions.” The constant need to defend one’s egotistical and selfish choices rules over common sense or over the ability to take a step back for someone else’s sake. It’s always about us; how we feel, how wronged we were, how much “right” we have to be angry, mean, selfish, passive aggressive and douchish. And why wouldn’t we? Don’t we assemble in groups of like-minded individuals? Alas, groups of those who justify and enable our own insanity and play by the same rules? Think of churches, religions and the Ku Klux Clan!
This planet is not necessarily stripped of reason or sanity, but of compassion, willingness to forgive and being the bigger person in the process of it. No, when someone feels wronged, we have to up them one, because somehow we feel that being the bigger person makes us weak or, god forbid, not right anymore! We are so wrapped up in our own stories of righteousness that we can’t even accept, and much less offer an apology. Because hey, if someone apologizes that means that they are truly to blame and doesn’t that make us right again and therefore gives us more reason to pounce on them; especially behind their backs?
Changing this planet and its crappy energy starts with you and me! It doesn’t start with our governments, or a religion or anything else for that matter. If we want a better place, we have to learn to be less greedy, less selfish and less willing to blame others/pointing fingers. Before you start judging right from wrong, try to walk a mile in another’s shoes.
I used to have a huge problem with this. Yep, I speak from experience again. It comes natural to me to follow a grid of right and wrong and black and white. I do fraud prevention for a living! I have worked with law in one form or another for most of my life and had absolutely no tools to examine the grey area. I would have made a great D.A., judge or private detective. And to some degree it is true; I instinctively sense right from wrong. But it doesn’t mean I have to act on it! Because sometimes it simply doesn’t change a thing when one is right and it sure as hell doesn’t lend reason to being a jerk.
Let me tell you some examples. I am in the grocery store. It’s been a long day; I am tired and already annoyed about the lines. Next to me is a woman with three boys. Two are older and the youngest one is a baby, which is screaming at the top of his lungs. He is screaming so loud that it actually hurts my ears. I’m starting to get really annoyed now, shooting “death glares” to the baby; when I notice the mother. The mother is terribly embarrassed. She is trying to distract and quiet her baby and the two older boys are also trying to help, to no avail. She quietly apologizes for the noise, pays and flees the store. I stopped myself and thought about how I never ever considered how she might feel! I found myself smiling at the little, screaming thing and noticing how cute he is, even as he is turning bright red from screaming so much. My anger and annoyance are immediately gone.
Another example; I’m bombarded by someone’s rant about how crappy their life is and how bad they feel about themselves. How they can’t muster up any energy to do things, how they are feeling beaten down, can’t sleep, can’t work out and so on. I find myself getting increasingly more irritated as I am hoping for the person to shut up. After all, I hold it together when I don’t feel too hot and I do something about the things I don’t like. But instead of giving a disapproving look and starting to “lecture,” I find myself just listening and nodding, telling them “yes, I know how this feels. I’ve been there. Can I do anything to make you feel better or help?” I found that the person stopped in mid-track and thanked me; then finding more energy to keep doing what they were doing.
Each and every day, I find I am given the opportunity to do something for another. Sometimes this means quietly listening, other times it means to maybe hand a dollar to a homeless person, or smiling at a stranger. In each day I find at least one moment to make it about someone else and not me. And by practicing this, I find myself not only more patient, but happier, more balanced, less annoyed or “triggered.”
Being kind and having compassion does not make you weak and it doesn’t mean you have to turn into a doormat! It serves well to remember that some people are better loved from afar and by having little or no contact with them. We have the right to refuse access to our life from those who are harmful to our well-being or growth as a person. We have the right, and always should set proper boundaries; it just doesn’t mean we have to do it in an obnoxious, mean or spiteful manner. And it doesn’t mean we have to tell the world about it and spread the negativity and toxicness! When someone wrongs us, we can silently walk away and we should always do our best to forgive, no matter what was said or done. Why? Because holding on to negative emotions will do nothing but make us sick; it won’t correct what was done and it won’t change the mind of the perpetrator.
Learning how to have compassion and how to forgive, and learning how to see the world through the eyes of another, even if just for a moment, will make the world a better place. Just as negative energy spreads like a virus, so does positive energy. If you want to change the world, you must learn to lead by example and to walk the walk yourself. This might appear as a huge and daunting endeavor, but with time it becomes one’s way of being and transforms not only one’s own life, but the life of others as well. Is it easy to do this? No! It is never easy to change one’s ways and it is truly difficult to not feed one’s ego and fall into the trap of defining your own worth by how right you were again. Everything we want to learn or know requires practice; and often the very things who were the hardest to learn return the highest and most gratifying rewards.
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Once again, you have made me think of how I can become a more positive person, one with more dignity than disgust.
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That’s the best answer so far!
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Well, it is my struggle too. There is a reason that I lived most of my life as a hermit, trying to avoid most people and hating crowds. Alas, as one tries to ascend to another level, one has to learn to walk one’s own walk 🙂
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Glad to be one of the visitors on this awe inspiring web site 😀