Change the World! (You Don't Have a Choice)
I recently attended an informal reunion of the Music Interest Floor from the University of Rochester. I transferred to another school in 1980 and left the Music Interest Floor Sleep Deprivation Society behind. I had not seen most of those wonderful, dearest friends since. Needless to say, it was emotional and fabulous. But I also found it inspiring, especially listening to my friend, Pam, describe what she was up to nowadays.
Pam has been quite successful for the last couple of decades in health care administration. But she has left that behind and, while still looking after three children at home (and a very impressive husband), has begun pursuing a doctoral program in hopes of participating in health care policy development. Why is she engaging in such an insane endeavor? Because she sees first hand the major problems in the United States health care system and wants to change it. She still (rightly) believes she can make a difference. The world needs more Pams!
But what difference do I make? What difference do you make? One of my great heroes is Saint Patrick who courageously returned to the land of his slavery and by the power of God transformed an entire people (sorry fellow Irishmen, he wasn't Irish - he was taken captive as a teenage slave, escaped and voluntarily returned to save those who had enslaved him). I regularly ask him to pray for me that I will not die having squandered the life God has given me but rather will pour out everything I am, like he did, to make a difference.
The Problem
But I've got a problem (besides just being me!). I've been spiritually focusing on trying to do the love directly in front of me - casting aside self-will in my life and trusting that God's will is done as I do the love He places in front of me rather than when I self-direct how I want to change the world in His service. This is still a grand experiment and I may be totally misdirected and out of my mind. I hope to share much more of this in future blogs as I have time. But how do I change the world if I have no self-will, no major plan and am focused on the love immediately in front of me.
Then it struck me: we cannot help but change the world (sometimes I take a long time to see the obvious!). The world is nothing more than the sum total of all the loving or selfish acts each person has done throughout history. Each act, no matter how small, permanently changes the world and we have no idea of the impact of any action we take.
The randomness of our own conception illustrates this well. Had my mother brushed her teeth one stroke longer or my father looked out the window at a noise in the street on his way to the bedroom, I would not have been conceived. Someone else might have been conceived but not me. The same for you. The person who did or did not make that noise in the street influenced the fact I exist.
The World is NOT Random
But the world is not just random. It is interwoven with choices for good or evil or, using more practical terms, for love or self. Every act of will adds either good or evil to the world and the result is the world we have. Call it karma, call it logic, whatever we call it, the world is the result of the interleaving of the random, the divine and our individual choices for love or self. Some are trivial and some are monumental but we will never know which is which.
Did Miriam have any idea what impact her faithful guarding of Moses in the basket would have upon the world? Did Pharaoh's daughter when she extended the small kindness of drawing him out of the Nile? Did the priests who were cruel to Josef Stalin as a child have any idea they helped create a tyrant who would take millions of lives? Did those nameless everyday folks who inspired the young Mahatma Gandhi have any idea how they would change the world?
Heaven or Hell?
So what kind of a world am I, are you, building? Thankfully, humans were made inherently good. There is always something which pulls us toward good no matter how "evil" we may be. Thus, we are always adding good to this world. Imagine a world where this was not the case. Imagine a world where every choice was made for self over other. A world devoid of love, of selfless acts. That is Hell (another subject on which I hope to blog soon). Hell is the place where those who choose to live for self rather than love go. Let's remember that when our culture encourages us to live lives for self.
On the other hand, although we were made inherently good, our usual disposition is for self. Hence, most of our choices are for self and they do inject evil into the world - in ways little and large and, again, we do not know which is which. That is why even little selfishnesses are so damaging. Imagine a world without self. Imagine a world where every choice was made in love for other regardless of self. A world with no victims of our selfish acts. A world without exploitation where people are not treated as objects for economic, sexual, visual, political or psychological consumption but rather esteemed as individual souls. That's Heaven - a place where everything is done out of love - not selfish love, not enlightened self-interest but true, selfless, eternally sustainable love.
So what kind of world are you building right now? What kind will you build five minutes from now? Later tonight? Tomorrow? Each time, with each decision, you are going to change the world. You just don't know how. All you control is whether the change will be for love or self, good or evil. Choose wisely, grasshopper :-)
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