Begin with self, find the Courage to change the world

We all talk of a better world, dream of a life where we can be truly happy and free of daily stress and the social ills that are bred through economic exploitation and the culture of plunder and war. We talk of 'one day'.

It is not easy to live in a world filled with so much violence - physical, emotional, structural, spiritual, genderbased and sexual We are overwhelmed by the presence of these acts and what they produce. The media makes money selling this violence to us, especially in the music, entertainment and news industries. This ongoing attention on violence pertuates the cycles of the violence. Positivity is rarely promoted in the media!

We are presented with a number of challenges: 

1. to withstand the temptation of fear dominating our way of Being
2. to withstand the temptation of buying into the ideas they are selling
3. to remain hopeful, full of hope
4. to Be peaceful, cooperative and optimistic
5. to Be courageous and fly the flag, wage war for a world where love is our religion and where cooperation and harmony is the standard

I am sure that you can think of more challenges. I have not even touched on the challenges of trauma release, healing and restoration that is required after violent acts.

To begin to respond effectively to these challenges we need to start with the self before moving toward a collective response. Whilst there is a collective response, the work with my self should continue. Our collective organised efforts often do not recognise the importance of each of us changing. After all if we aim to change the world, are we not intending for people to change their behaviour? In this case, we intend for people to change their behaviour from violent to peaceful . And who is the people, well, we are, even if we are not perpetrators. Are we always hopeful, peaceful, cooperative? No.  Do we become complicit to the violence by allowing fear to control us so that we cower and hand over our power to the perpetrators of violence? Yes. Perhaps some of the time we do speak out when we witness violence. Honestly if we all were courageous enough to take the power away from those perpetrating violence we would not be living in a world where for example "only 61% of the Sub-Saharan population having access to improved water sources", Alertnet.

We need to begin with the self, so that we are not bound by the chains of fear that is very effective tool to keep us in place. We don't always see how the system requires us to live in fear, be assured it does. If we were unfetterred by fear, we would speak out at every injustice, risk loosing our jobs, possessions, our life without a second thought. This is how change came about in our country, South Africa, we said "freedom in our lifetime, freedom or death, victory is certain". We were not afraid to loose possessions or life and many of us lost possessions, lives and loved ones.

Let us find the courage that resides, asleep or half awake within, let us rediscover our powerful, peaceful, hopeful selves so that we can start to gather the resources inside ourselves to continue journey toward a world where love is our religion and cooperation and harmony is the standard.

One Love