Be the Change You Want To See

Change a word that evokes so many different emotions in all of us.

Sometimes joy, in other cases sorrow, fear, anger and all the other range of emotions. Even when change is positive and desired it can instill fear of what’s different.

Change has been something all of us have been faced with in 2020.

We started the year 2020 and then we were faced with a pandemic that has forever changed our lives whether directly or indirectly.

Though one day the virus will not be a factor that continues to keep us in lockdown or isolation (as hard as it is to believe at this point!) the impact in terms of how it affected and infected will forever be etched in our memory.

The change though that I write about here may not be most times as drastic as what we are currently encountering with the pandemic. The change I refer to is the small actions you and I take daily as an individual that impacts others whether knowingly or unknowingly to us.

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You see it is very easy to complain and get bitter when things don’t change in the way we want, but my grandmother often said to me “be the change you want to see”.

Whatever does that mean?

I wondered about this for many of my younger years and it didn’t quite make sense to me. As I entered adulthood and experienced both the good, bad and in-between of living, I then understood it… finally.

We talk about change in so many various spheres, from our personal to professional to political to our spiritual and so the list goes on. However, the change we want to see effected, ultimately begins with you and me!

It sounds hard to hear …. I know.. I felt that way initially when this reality first resonated in my being.

So often we sit and wait for things to change, without taking an active part in facilitating this change.

While the change we want to see may be on a macro level. We as individuals, can do our part on the micro level as an individual, a family, a community and then see it spread to our entire society!

Let’s take our environment for example.

We all have been impacted one way or the other by our changing weather patterns no matter where in the world we live.

Though we may think recycling or discarding of other waste material properly may not as one individual or family have an impact on the environment. Consider this for a minute…let’s suppose each person in a community was to decide to just throw their trash in the road, can you imagine the phenomenal effect it will have? Let’s take it further, suppose an entire state was to decide to discard of their trash in the roads, what will eventually happen to that state and by extension other states?

You get my point.

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Each action you and I take personally will impact someone one way or the other. Two general possible ways it tends to be is either positive or negative.

If you think your action doesn’t impact someone, try doing something and consider the effect it can have on others. Let’s take the example again of throwing trash in the road. Let’s suppose you decide to throw your trash in the road, someone is walking in the road, doesn’t see maybe an empty bottle and stumbles over it and injures their foot, your one action would have had detrimental effects on someone else.

Unfortunately, most times though, when we think of change we see our role in effecting it as minimal, especially in most instances where there is no direct link between knowing the outcome of our actions.

We selfishly choose to do what we want to do. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying, we aren’t expected, nor can we live our lives by other people’s dictates. However, all the positive changes we want to see occur in our world, society, community, family, begins with us as individuals.

It is an awesome responsibility.

Though at times we may never know the outcome, one small act of effecting that positive change can have at the society level, rest assured each positive change adds up to eventually bring about the positive changes we want in our society.

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“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
― Barack Obama

“Be the change you want to see”. As we face the uncertainty of 2021 with many things still changing around us. I encourage you to be the change you want to see.

When we do this, we are well on the way to creating a better world, a better society for you, me and future generations.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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