You Are Needed
What a time to be alive!
If you’d been born a hundred years earlier, you would have missed out on all the amazing opportunities of this time - on the power that you have inherited. At no point in history have a group of “everyday” people had such power. There was a time when only the gentry, the nobility or elected representatives were able to affect lives all around the world. Now our shopping habits affect the lives of children thousands of miles away, and our holiday choices bring stability or chaos to economies and ecosystems. With a few clicks on 38 degrees or change.org we can sway policy decisions that were once made in closed board rooms or sessions of parliament. And we have such access to education and information: we can understand very well what impact our words and choices have on those around us.
So I think of this time as an exciting and challenging one. Sometimes, people tell me that because of their experiences or the beliefs they’ve inherited, this life isn’t, in some way, good enough. It’s painful or boring or pointless. But I disagree. As I come to understand myself better and as I work with my clients to come more fully to life, to discover the potency and potential contained in each moment, so I feel more connected with personal power and with personal responsibilities. Even the idea of being responsible brings excitement, for me. I can be an agent for change. I can choose to care deeply for the lives of those around me, and I live in a time with access to a hundred ways to improve and protect life.
You can achieve relatively little on your own, granted, and that can be frustrating. By ourselves, we can’t reverse climate change or save all the impoverished children of the world from drinking contaminated water. But we can do what we can. We can have large effects on those around us, and we can make small contributions to a larger story of change. We can take the power that this time has given us and put it to use for profoundly positive ends. I can do this and I will do this. You can do this too, you have this same power to make the world a better place. We can make the story of our lives into one of significance and dignity. Why would we not?
Why would you not choose to be a champion for good, today, and every day?
The theme of my social media shares this month (on Facebook, Twitter and Google+), along with the usual links, quotes and videos to support and inspire, will be: #YouAreNeeded. This comes from the the quote by Stephen Jenkinson:
NEWS OF YOUR INSIGNIFICANCE HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED. MIGHT YOU CONSIDER THE REAL POSSIBILITY: YOU ARE NEEDED.
It’s an invitation to leave behind stories of boredom, disempowerment or apathy and embrace personal stories of responsibility, power, compassion and integrity. Without losing ourselves in the language of guilt or victimhood (a great distraction, a terrible waste of potential), it’s an invitation to take stock of the tools and methods at our disposal, to assess our choices based on the good they bring about in the world, and to claim our power to contribute to the world that we long to live in.
After all, what would this world be like if we all lived this story together?
There is nothing stopping us but our own beliefs.