Be a Change Maker: Develop the Good that Exists

Since my earliest days, I have been drawn to those who want to make positive change and do what is right for others.

As a young girl who regularly went to my neighborhood Catholic church and catechism, I was enamored and inspired by the stories of Jesus Christ. It was amazing to me that a man would live so simply, stand up for the rights of others, and even sacrifice his life for those beliefs. Later I felt a similar sense of inspiration and admiration for Ghandi, King, and Mandela--men who faced grave circumstances and made tremendous sacrifice to forward their vision for a better world. Still today we see people who speak up and act on behalf of the people--women and men who tirelessly stand up to injustice and work for the rights of all. These people, like Warren, Oprah, Vilson, the Obamas, Malala, Kyi, Moran, Lehmann, Healey, Gates, Culberhouse, and so many more who have touched my life with their work and/or stories, people who give their time, resources, intellect, and vision to forward human rights, dignity, and good close to home and all over the world.

Who are the human rights champions that you know of, the people who do sacrifice for the good of all, people who work to forward the rights and potential of all people, not just some? These are people we work with, live near, read about, and lead close to home and far away--people who help us to see a better life and work for greater unity and promise. We may not agree with everything these people do, but we find great inspiration in their choices, work, and results. None of us are all-knowing or all-good, but most of us have something good to give. As our wealth and power increase, so does our need to be responsible about what we do, and how we impact others. We have to ask the hard questions, collaborate, and share our resources and potential to make better.

As everyday people, most of us reach for our dreams in ways big and small. It seems that most people try to carve out a good life for themselves and for those they love. They do what they think is right and good to make that good life happen. Good living can be defined in multiple ways, but there are some common denominators such as happiness, love, joy, and peace. What other adjectives describe good living for you, perhaps adventure, beauty, contentment, creativity, learning, physical fitness. . . .

There's always that tug at the base of this discussion, the tug between self and others. What do I do for myself and what do I do for others? There is a tug related to patience too--am I patient enough to invest the time, energy, and intellect to do the work the right way with others or am I too impatient and just push ideas and energy out in my own ways to make change? We all face ethical tugs too--we may continually ask ourselves about what is right and good in situations small and large--what is the right thing to do? And perhaps there's a world tug too between those who hold a survival-of-the-fittest-do-whatever-you-have-to-in-order-to-get-ahead mentality and those who believe we have to work together to help everyone rise instead?

Yet, it's rarely a binary debate, typically there's a continuum for every situation and we all fall somewhere on that line. There are few like Mandela who spent decades in jail and later rise to lead a country and there are few like Hitler too who spend life wholly targeted on hate and murder. Most of us fall somewhere on that line between great hate and destruction and amazing love and sacrifice. I do believe, however, that most of us are pulled towards greater love and commitment to one another than to the other side of hate, bitterness, and destruction.

So in this day and age, a time when we face a number of challenging and daunting world problems, problems like lack of clean water, air, and land, poverty, inequity, prejudice, and violence, we have to come together as a world people to forward a just and good standard of living for all the world citizens--a standard of living based on the American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have to rid our world of excessive greed, the kind of greed that finds individuals, organizations, and countries taking much more than their share of resources and good living, and instead work with creative and imaginative ways to make good living for all a standard. It is the great challenge of our times to come together as a people to wisely use our limited time, energy, and resources to create as much good, healthy, and happy living for all the world's people.

How do we do this?

First, we prioritize. I think that the environment has to come first. No one will live well if they don't have clean water to drink, clean soil to plant in, and clean air to breathe. This is essential and the world's people have to support as much green innovation, laws, and policies as possible to make this a reality.

Next, we have to prioritize freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom to live as you will as long as you aren't a threat or danger to others. We cannot allow some people to overcome others, instead we have to look for ways to allow all people to live as they choose without fear of violence or prejudice.

After that, we have to speak up and stand up to prejudice. We only have to look at the beautiful natural world to recognize that diverse peoples can live with and amongst each other with freedom, peace, and positive relationships. It is our primitive selves that support prejudice, and it is our lacking intellects that foster such discrimination.

Further, we have to look for ways to build strong, healthy, positive communities free of violence, hate, and despair. We will never be completely free of bad events, but we certainly can do better in this regard by looking at what makes people healthy and happy and forwarding those elements of living for all.

We have to also focus on the right balance of collaboration and competition--there's not a simple equation for this, but we can foster healthy competition and promising collaboration while working against competition that leads to inequity, conflict, and death and collaboration that lacks positive mission or process.

It is essential that we have good laws, policies, and protocols that we follow to maintain and develop more a peaceful world.  We need to continually revisit these laws, policies, and protocols to modernize and make better as the world moves ahead, and we have to make sure that the crooks and criminals amongst us, those that keep the rest of us compromised, fearful, and low, are dealt with in humane, but strict ways, that halt their hate, crimes, and mistreatment of others.

The conflicts between multiple world leaders, organizations, powerful people, and groups are forcing us to think about how our world will move forward. These conflicts today are in full view of most of us through our increased ability to learn about, and view the world's events, via technology. We can't shed a blind eye to the inequity, violence, greed, and corruption we see, and instead we have to work together as a people to find ways to elevate living for all. We can do better and we must.

We all have to turn our individual and collective attention, energy, and action to individuals and groups who are using their time, energy, truth, and intellect to make lives better--people who are standing up and speaking out for what is right and good for people and the planet. We have to study and work with others to forward what is right and good, and we can't passively sit back and stay silent if we want stronger, more positive, and better communities--communities that nurture the best of whom we can be.

Past hateful and oppressive regimes all over the world throughout time have shown us what bad acts can do to diminish good lives, great potential, and wonderful lands--we are less because of this past hate and destruction, and we can't forward those demeaning and inhumane acts as we move ahead in time. We can do better and we must.

What will you do?