How many times have you sat around talking with friends, family or co-workers and wondered about how great it would be if the world was different? We all do it to some degree or other. This wondering could be in the form of rhetorical questions like “Why do we have to have wars and kill one another?” or “How can we claim to be so civilized yet do such uncivilized things to each other?” or in the famous words of Rodney King, “Why can’t we all get along?”
Let me propose some other queries I hear in my travels:
• Wouldn’t it be great if we would trust one another?
• Wouldn’t it be great if everyone would have enough to eat so they don’t have to die of malnutrition?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we stopped hating one another?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we all told the truth to each other?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we all felt free to say what we would like to say?\
• Wouldn’t it be great if every human being was valued equally?
Why do these common “wonderings” remain merely ideological? Why are we satisfied having them as “thought candy’ rather than moving into action to make them happen in the world? Why are we content to talk these values but not walk them?
There’s a Christian hymn that concludes “Let it begin with me.” This is the only place we humans can begin to bring about the values we all claim to hold dear: ourselves. Starting with our daily actions, our words, our silences, our abstentions, our routine habits, our addictions, our consciousness, our consciences, our fears, our personas, our unexpressed emotions, our rhetoric and our own pompousness. “Our” means yours and mine.
Let’s stop wondering “wouldn’t it be great if” and start walking our talk before the world gets so insane it becomes the defacto asylum.
Let me propose some other queries I hear in my travels:
• Wouldn’t it be great if we would trust one another?
• Wouldn’t it be great if everyone would have enough to eat so they don’t have to die of malnutrition?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we stopped hating one another?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we all told the truth to each other?
• Wouldn’t it be great if we all felt free to say what we would like to say?\
• Wouldn’t it be great if every human being was valued equally?
Why do these common “wonderings” remain merely ideological? Why are we satisfied having them as “thought candy’ rather than moving into action to make them happen in the world? Why are we content to talk these values but not walk them?
There’s a Christian hymn that concludes “Let it begin with me.” This is the only place we humans can begin to bring about the values we all claim to hold dear: ourselves. Starting with our daily actions, our words, our silences, our abstentions, our routine habits, our addictions, our consciousness, our consciences, our fears, our personas, our unexpressed emotions, our rhetoric and our own pompousness. “Our” means yours and mine.
Let’s stop wondering “wouldn’t it be great if” and start walking our talk before the world gets so insane it becomes the defacto asylum.
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