BIG change: beautiful future
Posted on 18 August 2018
Preface
If you are reading this book then it’s because, like me, you want a beautiful future. You don’t want a world that is largely dead and at war with itself. You want a world where we can all be at peace with ourselves, each other, and the living world which we all share.
You don’t want a world where you constantly have to worry about: am I attractive enough, am I important enough, am I safe from poverty. You don’t want a world where you have to worry about who is a threat to your well-being through control, competition or violence. You don’t want a world where you must be fearful about the quality of the air you breathe, the water you drink, or the food you eat. Nor do you want to be terrified of starvation and loneliness as the Earth’s flora and fauna dies off.
The question that must be asked then is: are you or I prepared to face terrible truths which will give us the insight we need to make a difference in all this?
We are all very good at blinding ourselves to painful truths. Of course we are! These truths frighten us because we don’t want to suffer. I certainly don’t want to suffer. However, sometimes the idea of pain is worse than the experience of pain. It’s like being afraid of taking a shot. I can get sweaty and tense as the doctor is about to give me an injection, then in moments it’s over and the doctor is saying, “There, that didn’t hurt so much.”
Let’s say we have to face a truth such as being diagnosed with an incurable disease. It is very human to go into denial. I can’t really have this disease, we may say to ourselves. Some people then choose not to receive any treatment, hoping that their disbelief is sufficient to make that disease disappear. Their fear is so great and their denial so complete that they end up suffering more when the effects of the disease start taking their toll. Parents have done this in relation to their children, they can’t imagine a child having a serious illness. So, they don’t ensure that their child has appropriate treatment and their young one dies. Newspapers regularly carry these sad stories.
We can’t let anything like this happen to our planet.
Of course determining the truth of any situation is a tricky business. It requires strength, humility, and compassion. Anything less and you may find yourself either staring at a rose-colored and convenient illusion or lost in a world distorted by rage. Sometimes people manage both at the same time.
I was raised under very rigid circumstances. It was stifling. Yet, I still believed something better was possible. So, I have been open to changing my mind about things whenever something seemed kinder and more true. I have regularly had to rethink my positions and alter them, even when that meant walking away from people I love, because their presence was destructive of my emotional well-being or they were behaving in ways that lacked compassion for other humans or our living world.
Do I feel stupid and badly about myself for once sharing the darker beliefs with which I was raised such as racism, classism, and the right to be the perpetrators of lethal violence with a gun? You betcha. Sometimes I feel like much of my life has simply been about weeding out ignorance and hatred. And yet, that is an admirable occupation. I regularly remind myself my experience gives me insight. Compassion for my own journey gives me the capacity to show compassion toward others who wish to grow.
Frequently I will think I have found the truth about life, only to find deeper truths later on. This is why I embark on this book with some trepidation. I do not wish to mislead anyone. I do however want to give people the chance to benefit from my experience. I know a useful saying that goes, “Take what works for you and leave the rest”. This saying applies to school teachers, counsellors, books, etc.
Big Change is meant to get at our core beliefs, values, and truths, face up to them and then find a better way forward. What I ask of people may seem hard, may sometimes be hard, but the idea is that ultimately it will make for a much better world than the one we are currently headed for. I don’t want easy answers, I want REAL answers. I don’t want to be dangerously coddled, I want to know exactly what I am facing, exactly what needs to be done and start doing it. By addressing our own individual pain I am hoping we can help to cure everyone’s pain.
We have to start by believing a beautiful future is possible. We then have to fully commit ourselves to creating it. The time is now.
This is the beginning of a book I am writing on Wattpad. I will continue to post each segment here and elsewhere, but it is likely to go up first on Wattpad.
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