Be the change you wish to see in the world.

The other day, I wrote about being right and being happy. To do right, to stand up for right: these are positive, constructive, powerful ways to occupy our time and creative energy. Trying to be right and covering our pet arguments in an effort to maintain that we are right is at best a waste of our creative energy and at worst quite detrimental to our own well-being and to our relationships. This is, of course, my view, so I cannot say for certain whether it is the right understanding for you.

As Don Miguel Ruiz says, "I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand." What is absolutely the truth for me may be totally wrong for you, according to our experiences and understandings of the world. That's cool. But for what it's worth, doing right and standing up for right on the one hand and trying to be right on the other are not the same to my mind.

Today, I want to talk about being the change. A mentor and teacher of mine often refers to this. She says, "Be that change."

I am quite certain most people who read this entry will have encountered this quote in print any number of times, will have heard this quoted in speech any number of times, and may very well feel it a bit trite.

I bring it up here because I first really considered its meaning when I was translating it as part of a friend's speech. She was giving a speech for Rotary International during her time as an exchange student in Japan. She opened with this quote from Gandhi, and it gave me pause to consider the meaning of the words.

For instance, consider the phrase "the world." It can point to all that is on this earth--the geology, the politics, the economic structures, and the myriad systems, both natural and made by the hands and minds of human--or more specifically to interconnected human society.

In Japanese, these two ideas can be "sekai (世界)" and "yo no naka (世の中)." I chose to translate Gandhi's words using the latter term, which means all the people in the world as opposed to the more inclusive world as all that is on the earth.

It was something like "世の中に変化を求めるならば、先ずあなた自身が変わらなければならない。" In English, If you seek change from the world at large (i.e., society), then first you yourself must change.

I was pretty smug with this translation as it was seemed pretty colloquial rather than overly bookish (native Japanese speakers, feel free to take exception!) and represented my take on what I believed at the time to be what Gandhi was conveying. If you expect society to change, you should hgggggggbe the first.

And perhaps this was the intention behind the original quote. However, I would choose to translate it differently now to mean the whole world rather than society. I see that there is so much potential for change in our lives, in our worldview, in our reality. But we have to be the first. We have the be the catalyst for change, the architect of change, and the one who makes certain we do not fall back into old habits and patterns of thinking, doing, being.

Sure, we have to be the first to change if we want greater society to change. In my last post, I talked about hating poverty. I can hate a lot of social injustices. I can get really angry and burn with righteous indignation. And I may be justified in my feelings--or at very least it may seem totally justified to just about everybody--but my anger does not do a single thing to effect change and is therefore of no use to anybody. It just causes me anxiety, stress, and probably more white hair. So, instead of this, I can change and be an example. If I want peace, I have to be peace. And others will surely follow. Ripple effect occurs, world peace happens, and suddenly we are all holding hands and singing. You get the picture.

But the potential for meaning of this quote extends beyond mere human society.

世界に変化を捜し求めるならば、先ずは自分自身が変われば良い.
If you seek change in this world, you need only begin the change in you.

Ah, this means something a little bigger, a little more nuanced, a little more mystical and cool-sounding. If you seek change in your world (not just society but the all-inclusive version of the world as discussed above), you need only begin with you. Change your thinking, change your life, change your worldview, change your world. It's that simple. It is not necessarily an easy feat, but it really is quite simple.

If you wish for a peaceful life, you must practice peaceful thoughts.
If you want acceptance, you must practice acceptance.
If you want a loving world, you must practice to love.

We only have what we give as Isabel Allende reminds us. Clutch it to you, try to hold onto it, and you can never truly have it; it isn't yours because you cannot rest easy with it. You must always clasp at it to ensure it does not depart from you. You cannot enjoy it. But give it generously, use it to increase your own joy and that of others, be magnanimous with it, and it is yours.

We only have what we practice: we get very good at whatever we habitually do. If I rage on the road, I develop road rage and I am very good at being angry. If I always look on the dark side of things, I develop an Eeyore-like personality. If we have awareness, we pay attention to what it is we are habitually doing and see whether this is in the service of us.

And the way in which we give and practice makes all the difference in our inner life and our subjective experience of how the world is. If I give grudgingly, I am apt to feel pretty impoverished. I feel reluctant to give, and once I have done it, I feel like the world's biggest fool at having done so. If I give my time to others and don't save any for myself, putting everyone else before myself and then feeling miserable and like a doormat afterward, I am liable to feel like nobody cares, nobodyr notices, and everyone is using me. Even if these are just my own interpretations and everyone actually thinks I'm swell, it doesn't matter because my view on the world is my filter for reality.

If I seek change in my world, I must change my thoughts. Change my thoughts, and I effectively shake up the emotions that come about as a result of my interpretations of my own thoughts. I interpret reality this way or that and this gives rise to a stream of thoughts. Then, I have an interpretation of these and this produces an emotional charge. It's either feel-good positive or feel-bad negative. And then I think about and interpret this emotion and affix all sorts of meaning and assign all sorts of significance. And on and on and on the chain can go.

If you wish to see change in your world, you need only change your thoughts and your habitual reactions to these. This will shake up that emotional charge and get things moving. And the lucky thing is it does not cost any more than lots of time and attention and practice. And since we only have what we practice, chances are good that the more you try this out, the better you will get and the more you can shake things up. It's like changing up your dinner menu. Maybe you always have pizza on Fridays and now you're going to try making sure you introduce some Thai, some Chinese, and some sub sandwiches (Or hoagies, heroes, or grinders, for that matter). And when you do and things start to move, you just pay attention.

Maybe the menu won't agree with your palate or your stomach. If not, look for something else. There are plenty of thoughts in the store cupboard and no doubt just as many emotions.

So try out a little kitchen alchemy and get changing.