Creating Change

What do we need in order to create

sustainable long-term changes around us?

This is a question I often ponder. Whenever I encounter distress, pain, brutality, ignorance and injustice, my mind starts going over different understandings, different causes, different ways of action, different solutions and their possible consequences. Witnessing distress and injustice can be triggering; first of all I feel the pain of it deep inside. I feel sad and powerless and I grieve.

Anger and the power to act.

I also feel anger; sometimes because the grief and powerlessness is too unbearable and anger gives me a sense of fire and power. Sometimes anger burns inside me, drives me and helps me not to get stuck in the pain. Sometimes the anger is just anger; a boundary I consider sacred has been crossed and I want to clearly express this to the offenders; that there are places that I believe you cannot trespass, whether they be physical or immaterial.

But beyond the anger, the powerlessness and the grief there is a deep yearning; not just to impose on others what I consider right and wrong but more-so to raise awareness and create sustainable changes. I don’t want superficial change – I don’t want this never ending battle of wills where, what is wrong and right is decided by those who know how to make the most noise, have the hardest arguments or the force of majority or legal power.

What kind of changes is it that we want?

The world does change constantly. Even if the whole of the human race did nothing but sit and daydream, things would change, the world would change. This is in some ways a relief to me. But when I look at the mentality of western society it appears to me as if there is a stuckness and a repeating of patterns. It is as if we are mentally caught in a dualistic dance between the righteous and powerful and the wrongdoers who need to be punished and change their ways. I think it happens on all levels of society and in all circles; it happens in families in subtle ways when children are raised to fit in to a certain idea of “normality”. It happens in schools and institutions where the theatre of “the survival of the fittest” is played out. It happens in organisations where hierarchical structures keep a few people in power and responsible for the lives and well-being of many. It happens in politics where fear-based decisions seem to be being made daily.

And again I wonder how can we change these collective habits and ways of thinking. How can we create deep change, true change – change that comes out of love for life rather than out of anger against wrongdoers. Change that comes from a place of trust rather than a place of fear and resentment. Change that will last and not just be a tokenistic gestures to makes us feel better…

The amount of things in the world that I would like to see change is overwhelming. Writing this piece has given me the idea to write a list of those things but as I am probing around my mind to come up with items my insides start screaming: “No, no! No, we do not want to see it all, face it all, feel it all. Please, do not make us remember! Please do not go there. Please don’t look!”

And I hesitate…