“We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.”—Orison Swett Marden
There are very few people who will tell you the world is perfect. In fact, if they did, you might question their sanity or ask from under which rock they came. There is not even a hidden microcosm of perfection in the world. Every community, region, state, and nation has issues. Every work environment is flawed. Every family is uniquely “dysfunctional”. (I use “dysfunctional” here because it is, in my humble opinion, overused and misused. Blaming family seems to be the number one excuse for our own shortcomings.)
So, your world isn’t perfect? What are you going to do?
Now, there are two ways to read that last question: “What are you going to do?” How you read and answer the question is a daily—often moment-to-moment—response.
What are you going to do? Here, it its read dismissively—like “it is what it is; nothing you can do about it.” This leads to anger and frustration—or worse, apathy. The result is never change. We either accept the circumstances as they are and live disappointed, or we run.
What are YOU going to do? Here we recognize that our circumstance needs to change, and we take ownership. We consciously determine to do something—to be an agent for change. Yes, it can lead to anger and frustration, but we use this emotion to drive our actions.
Sometimes, we can be up against seemingly insurmountable odds. Often, systems have been in places for a very long time. Often, the very mention of change offends people who think the very suggestion that something needs to change is an attack on them personally. Sometimes, taking ownership of the issue at hand is like taking on the role of Sisyphus. While driving change might seem futile, action is always at least slightly less futile than inaction.
Often it is that one stubborn, fed-up, person, who decides to start pushing, who inspires the more apprehensive to join in. It the one who dares to do the impossible who does the “impossible”.
“We make the world we live in and shape our own environment” (Marden). This is a call to ownership. We are responsible for the world in which we live. We have a choice of shaping our environment or conforming to it. Even if we accept our world as it is, we have shaped it by allowing it to be as it is. So, if you don’t like the world in which you live, what are you going to do about it?
Carpe momento!