If there was just one thing that you could do the change
the world, what would it be? You are not
allowed to wave a magic wand. It has to
be something that you could do.
There was a quote on Twitter today, “It’s easier to put
on slippers than to carpet the whole world.” (Al Franken) It is another version of, ‘If you want to
change the world first change yourself.’
We all tend to assume that change is going to come from without; that
‘they’ will change things if we moan enough.
But what is each of us doing to become one of the ‘they’ that get things
altered for the better?
Deep down we’d all like the world to be carpeted so we
wouldn’t have to bother with taking off our comfortable slippers. But in reality, how much effort is involved
in making, say, one small change this week and another small one next week?
Imagination – that’s what we need, to be able to see how
dramatically life would change if we all changed a little. Imagine, as a simple example, a day on the
roads where everybody showed just a little more consideration for other
drivers, cyclists, buses, horse riders.
Of course slowing down and giving a horse or cyclist more room won’t
change the world overnight. But it will
change your mind-set. And it’s because
we’re not prepared to start with small changes that we do not change at all.
No one person by themselves can change the world, nor
would it be right that they should. We’re
all in this: it’s by working together that we can change things together. We’ve all admired individuals in the past who
have achieved great things: Nelson Mandela, Bob Geldof, Gandhi, Mother Theresa,
for a start. None of these – or a thousand,
thousand more – achieved what they did, alone.
But crucially they began with themselves, their determination to make
change happen, regardless of any personal cost in terms of freedom, future,
time, money or effort.
Goodwill, community spirit, maximising beneficial
relationships – these are the seeds for growing world change. I’ve just set up a new Twitter feed, and even
with the small selection of feeds I am following, I am surprised, delighted and
heartened at the amount of goodwill, kinship of spirit and fostering of right
relationships that is currently out there.
All manifested by people who strove to change.
Community is not
just about your immediate neighbourhood, your social set, or even your
religious community. It’s about sharing
‘in common’ with everyone on this planet all the problems and all the
solutions, all the abundance and all the deprivation. We all have something worthwhile to share,
whether it’s our time, money, prayer, action – or indeed, just the will to
change. We need to throw off those comfortable
slippers, put on our working boots and start a process of change – today!
