A Response to Global Events- And 5 Ways to Make a Difference Right Now

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails with concerns about recent world events, particularly this week’s events in Paris. The emails have been filled with everything from anger to despondence, judgments, helplessness, finger-pointing, and fear. One email simply said : “The world is becoming a really scary place”. How are we to understand these recent events and the apparently escalating violence in the world? What (if anything) can we do? Here is a response.

We are often tricked into putting our energy into the dramas of the world and thus squandering our personal power toward making change. Each of us is more powerful than we realize, and our smallest efforts have great ripple effects. The illusion is two-fold : 1) that the problem is GLOBAL, therefore out of our reach and purview, and 2) that we do not have power. Both of these are false. Let’s look at them one at a time.

1. It’s a GLOBAL problem.

Where does hatred begin? What are the seeds of discord?

The moment we buy into the drama of the news we buy into story – someone else’s story – the story that governments are perpetrators or protectors, at fault or left to make the repairs. We talk of war. We talk of policies, we discuss diplomacies where the subject is always ‘Other’. We stay in the impersonal, macro of the headlines.

In fact, hatred begins the same place that peace originates – within the Self.

How much do I point a finger at the “big events” and “horrible people out there” making these macro headlines while in my micro world I harbor resentment toward my boss, my partner, my children? Do I yell at my child to hurry because I’m going to be late to my yoga class? Do I kick the dog out of the way because I got a bill that was higher than expected? Do I volunteer to foster abandoned animals while refusing to speak with my sister? How much do we run to the TV to watch shows that put-down people so that we can shake our heads and say “what a mess, I’m glad I’m not one of those housewives”? How much of our entertainment comes at the expense of pointing out difference in order to create division – they’re crazy and I’m not, they’re fatter than me, they’re less cool/smart/in-the-know/up-to-date – all in the name of “humor”?

The micro IS the macro. They are We.

Whatever I cultivate within myself the greater, outer world is going to mirror it. If each of us were to focus on our micro worlds and cultivate peace within our Selves, our families, our communities, the combined effect – peace added to peace growing exponentially – would mirror just as strongly in the outer world. Division is division. If I devote my time and energy to fostering division and discord I will manifest that; if I devote myself to fostering peace and seeking bridges I will manifest that world.

Which brings it all back to personal power.

2. Personal Power – The Individual That Makes Change.

Sticking to the illusion that it’s a GLOBAL story, existing somewhere “out there”, or that it involves just a few “crazy people” – some sort of aberrant fringe that doesn’t involve me – obscures the reality of our own participation in the world we have jointly created. From this place we forget that it is we who have dreamed this world into being, that we have a place in this, our own personal role, in the communal story. And we’ve created this world through both action and inaction.

Until we accept responsibility for our own actions – our own micro world that we are creating with every choice we make in every second of our every day – we turn over our personal power to the “they”. This means that we are choosing by non-participation to vote yes to the macro story. As we’ve seen the impact that a few individuals doing violent acts can have to mobilize half the world so, too, can individual acts of positivity and courage. And it doesn’t take a Mother Teresa or a Gandhi.

Craig Kielburger, a 12-years-old Canadian boy, went searching for the comics in the paper one day when he came across a story about a boy his age in South Asia who was sold into slavery at age four, and had just died trying to defend other children by speaking out against child slaves. Craig was so moved by this story that he went to school and told all his friends; together, they decided to form a group called Free the Children and raise awareness of this issue by writing a few letters, telling other school kids. Today, ten years later, Craig’s organization has become an international charity and educational partnership with 2.3 million young people working in more than 45 countries. He has appeared before Canadian Parliament, and provided the means for thousands to attend schools, have access to free water, education, and other resources to counter-act needs that would otherwise fuel the child slave labor trade. Not bad for a 12 year old.

What Craig did is what we are all capable of : Response. Craig didn’t see a GLOBAL problem that was someone else’s mess to fix. Craig didn’t see a big problem half the world away and think it had nothing to do with him, or that he had no possible role in its remedy. Instead Craig simply did what he knew he COULD do, which is to gather his classmates, educate them on this problem, and then begin to write letters. As more and more became aware of and inspired by his passion his organization grew organically. In other words, Craig didn’t look at the end point – either how big it needed to be, or how impossible it would be to make it big – , he didn’t quantify it before even starting it (it has to have this impact, reach these people, etc.) – Craig simply responded. And as we can see with Craig’s story, when we respond, the Universe begins to take care of the rest.

Personal power involves two things : Cleaning up my inner world, my micro, and responding in the outer world. And every single one of us can do these two things right now. Here are 5 ways to begin.

Five Ways to Make a Positive Impact in the World RIGHT NOW.

1. Turn off the News.
Personal power involves the person. As a person I have a finite amount of hours in my day, and a finite amount of energy. If I spend all my time indulging in endless news stories, talking endlessly with everyone I meet about what I’ve seen and read in the news, then I’ve just used up the energy I have available to make a positive impact. I’ve chosen to use my energy – which is mine, so only I am in charge of what I do with it – to feed the Story of the GlobaI instead of doing something to change it.

2. Stop Feeding the Beast.
If I spend all my time indulging in endless news stories, and talking endlessly about the news stories, I am giving energy to the problem – I am feeding the beast. Stories are only popular if people energize them – if we meet around the water cooler and say “I heard this …” Passing on stories puts energy into them. Why haven’t you read about Craig Kielburger until this blog? Because the Story of the Global trades on negative energy; the stories that sell are the stories that highlight the dramas, fuel the negatives, the fear. CHANGE IT. Spread stories of positive efforts and events instead.

In this world, both anguish and peace, despair and joy, exist at the same time. It is our choice what we choose to foment. Everything is energy (see #1). This means that wherever I put my energy – which is also to say my focus – that grows larger. If we continue to put energy into the negative bucket, this bucket gets filled. But we can also choose to put our energy into the positive bucket. This bucket, too, can become filled and even overflow.

3. Buy Less.
One of the tricks we play on ourselves to turn over our personal power is that of believing that our wants are needs. When we walk around filled with wants we automatically create the belief that we are lacking. Lacking is the illusion that there are limited resources in the world, which in turn tells the story that I have to barge in front of someone else to make sure I have my share. This automatically puts peace in jeopardy. It is the seed of have and have-not and this bears the root of division. From this root entire wars have been waged.
We cannot create a world of abundance if, inside ourselves, we simultaneously feel we are lacking, or that someone has something we would be better off having, or that we have one up on someone because we have and they don’t. We cannot build a bridge while at the same time we are creating division.

Having wants expends our finite (and precious) energy. Watch yourself the next time you want and find the chain of events : wanting, coveting, researching, buying, feeling guilty about, looking at your bank balance, agitating over, talking about with others. How much time do we talk about THINGS with others?

The next time you go to buy something ask yourself if this is a want or a need. And if it is a need is it a legitimate need or an illusory need? What would happen if you didn’t buy it, and instead harnessed that energy (see #1) that would have been expended on the noisy chain of want and use it to do something that responds to the world instead of reacting to it? Take back your personal power (time, energy) and use it to do something positive, that gives to the world instead of takes from it.

4. Cultivate Stillness.
Harness the energy spent on following the news, repeating negative conversations to others, watching entertainment that trades on negatives, wanting and buying, and instead become still, quiet, and focus on generating peace within the Self. From this place we can begin to look for where we can generate peace within our families, amongst our friends, at our work. From here great change occurs.

When is the last time you sat by yourself in silence – email closed, computer/phone/tablets off, music off, TV off, no book in your hand, just sitting? Look out your window – when is the last time you took a walk? When is the last time you stopped to watch the sunset? Paid attention to the sounds of the birds?

We can’t allow for peace to evolve when we ourselves are busy and cluttered. If we are filled with constant noise and distraction this is what we will nurture in our outer lives. Instead get quiet. Take your child for a walk and show them a leaf – learn from them by their own marveling in the miracle of nature that we live amongst miracles in every second, in every day. When we shut out the noise we begin to become aware of these abundant miracles and we give them the space to increase.

When we find the stillness, in that exact moment we rise above. From this place we can remember what made us fall in love with our partner in the first place and acknowledge that. From this place we can hear the important things our child wants to tell us and we can take the time to listen to them. From this place we can see our own role in the discord between our siblings, our parents, our colleagues and take a step towards repair. From this place we can find new ways to build bridges over differences, to re-find the joy and gratitude, the peace and commonalities, which are present right now, at exactly the same time that the anguish and violence exists. And from this place of knowing we can take a choice about the world we want to cultivate.

5. Reverse and See for Yourself.
Not sure you believe in your own power and the profound effect of the micro? Do this exercise : The next time you have a “bad day”, at the end of that day before going to bed reverse on the day – simply close your eyes and watch your day backwards. Simply see how and who this “bad day” has affected. Do it without judgment – just look and let it inform you. Then, do the same exercise when you have a day where you walk around with a smile in your heart. What do you learn?

Right now the world is doing the same thing that it has been doing for millennia : watering and fertilizing the drama, the negativity, the divisions, and hatred. And the world looks the same. We’re told to fight harder, put more force, depend on governments, say it’s “they” – and yet, the world looks exactly the same. The world has been doing the same thing, advising the same thing, reacting the same way, and nothing has changed.

It’s time to try something different.

What would the world look like if, instead, we were to all say “Enough!” What would happen if each of us got very quiet, very still, and chose to nurture the joy, peace, and gratitude in each moment available to us in our own self and in our own days? What would happen if we finally buried the hatchet with our sibling, our parent, our spouse, our ex? If we finally slowed down and took the fleeting moments with our child as a treasure and listened instead of telling? What would happen if I, the individual – You, the individual – responded? According to my tradition if each one of us made the correction in our self to bring peace to our own lives there would be peace on the entire earth.

If we want the world to be different WE have to be different. It’s time.