“You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as you dominant aspiration.”—James Allen
We seem to be increasingly dominated by desires that lack spiritual depth. I am not speaking in the religious sense here. Rather, I am considering our desires in the universal sense of Spiritual “well-centeredness”.
Not linking these thoughts to any one event or events, per se, it would appear that we have succumbed to a world vision that is limited to our own opinions and experience without recognizing that the universe is far greater than what we see. The world is not made up of dichotomies. The world is not divided along clear lines of race, religion, gender, income, ethnicity, etc. These are the limits that statisticians and political pundits put on us to simplify the effort to quantify the world. We buy into the nonsense we are fed.
I saw a meme today that blamed the media for the racial divide in the United States. (Once could easily have substituted “racial” for any other factor upon which we divide ourselves.) It is easy to blame the media for our ills, but we are consumers of the media. The media only feed us what we are willing to consume. If we don’t participate, it won’t have an audience. So, we must face the reality that we are in control of ourselves and our society.
There is a great opportunity before us all. We alone choose how we will respond to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There may be a season for some to grieve. For others, there may be a season to celebrate. But for everyone, there is a season to move forward.
Daily, we are presented with the circumstances that can break us. Thus, we have a choice. We can allow our circumstances to overwhelm us—leaving us, fearful, frustrated, discouraged, and so on—or we can take a more positive route. In the direction of the positive, we can accept our circumstance as a challenge, or we can see it as an opportunity. In the universal sense, accepting our circumstance as an opportunity for the greater good will have the greatest impact. Such an approach is the better path toward change. For one, we are acceding a more internal locus of control.
I am increasingly frustrated by the trend of sheltering the feelings of others. This, by no means, suggests that I am in favor of bullying others or intentionally offending others. My frustration lies in the lack of unification this promotes. To arrive at true understanding, we need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We need to sit at the table together and, as Stephen Covey put it, “seek first to understand and then to be understood.” We have that flipped in our society, and it is furthering the divide.
I get it. People are frustrated. I have been there. But, frustration is an opportunity for cooperation. It is an opportunity to come together in community.
The choice is mine and yours. Carpe momento!