In one way, or another, we as people have come to define the world as unfair. Violence haunts families and pays the malicious; and what little paradise we individually hold onto becomes all we fixate on. Even if that means peace and hope, we silence ourselves from those around us and we conclude that where “I” am today is what’s solely relevant. Others passively attempt to solve the problems of injustice by donating money rather than working within their communities to disrupt the root of the injustice itself. To all, from the disenfranchised to the comfortable, everyone everywhere, we must have hope and walk together in solidarity to make not only the world, but our communities, our relationships and anything we truly care about, better.
Today as much as tomorrow, we need to change ourselves to be more hopeful and to put that hope into action. Without it we will continue to live oppressed by those who make it their business to sell money at the cost of sacrificing hope, peace and other things relative to our humanity. Our children will be affected, our communities, our people, our planet and our future needs us together to develop progressive relationships versus blame and societal stagnation. We are taught to disregard the reality that we are all interconnected and in some instances we are rewarded for the accomplishment of isolation. It is us who need to come together and it starts with changing the self.
More and more the question of “why” still comes into play, and in all honesty it’s because each of us need it. Why did people fight for civil rights, to vote, worked to have a stable union for people, our nation’s independence? It all was for the sake of humanity and yet we pass it by as just something we learn in school, or just history, or simply irrelevant and perhaps the ideal of these things in a society that makes a bigger deal about television over the U.S refusal to seek alternatives to nuclear weaponry is unjust. The unnecessary complexity to raise a family safely is unjust. The fact that our comfort serves as profit for people who care more about money than our dying earth is unjust. We need to be more hopeful and we need it to be put into action, to form an international movement of solidarity. Become more civically engaged encourage others to be as well. It may be hard or even a little different and I believe that for the sake of humanity we can do it. We’ve achieved peace nonviolently before and we can do it again, internalize what it means to keep hope alive and put it into action, and constructively we will make a change.
“I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony.” H.H the Dalai Lama