What if the world woke up one day with amnesia? What do you think it would look like?
Would our initial instinct be to cooperate with our neighbor, or would we feel the need to dominate them? Would we look for ways to help our community grow as one, or concentrate solely on improving life for ourselves, even if it came at the expense of others? Would we lead with our hearts or judge with our minds?
I believe we as human beings are hard-wired for love. The concept of leading with your heart is just easier for some people to believe in.
There are opportunities all around us each and every day to make our world a better place. Unfortunately, most of us are too closed off to actually recognize them. We’re in too much of a hurry to be bothered. After all, it’s a dog eat dog world and time is money. Me, myself and I are all that’s important. If what I’m doing doesn’t directly benefit me in some way, then what’s the point?
In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin writes only twice of “survival of the fittest,” but 95 times of love.
He writes of selfishness 12 times, but 92 times of moral sensitivity.
Of competition 9 times, but 24 times of mutuality and mutual aid.
People look at the world and wish things were better. Every time we open a newspaper or turn on the T.V we are bombarded with images of war and violence. The world around us can look like a pretty terrible place, and trying to change it alone seems futile.
Understand that you do make a difference.
If you believe that change can’t happen, then change won’t happen. Do your small part to improve things in your tiny corner of the world, and watch as the world around you changes.
Derrick's Spiritual Journey 
Derrick,
Another wonderful post that really spoke to me. It instantly made me think of Gandhi’s famous, “you must be the change you want to see in the world.”
We do need to slow down and recognized those opportunities to make the world a better place, as you said. They’re perpetually in front of us in everything we do. The thing is, and I think something very few people think about, is that we ourselves are part of that “world”. By that I mean, whatever we do to make the world a better place, we it make it better for ourselves, too.
We’re all different and yet the same. We’re all special and yet none of is special. Life’s ultimate paradoxes. None of us is above or beneath helping the other. If we had the amnesia you wrote about (a very though-provoking idea), I think we would cooperate with our neighbour because we’d realize we are our neighbour.
When we start to change ourselves for the world, the world will start to change for us. As the young man did with the graffiti riddled wall; he led by example. What he did was for him and his own personal growth. His leadership earned him an army of the same cause.
We are all leaders.
Peace and Love, brother.
Jimmy
Excellent points. I had no idea about the Darwin thing.
How did you get those stats, by the way? Did you count yourself, or did you Google it somewhere? I never thought of Darwin as being anything but a cold, logical scientist. How wrong I was!
Google search. The same info came up on a bunch of different websites. I actually thought the exact same thing about Darwin. Interesting stuff.