Changing the World

The More Things Change …

Filed Under: Journeys, Reflections, Resources, Stories · June 27, 2010 · 2 Comments ·

For various reasons this last week, I have found myself in a deeply reflective space.

I’ve walked again in an earlier me, revisiting events and experiences from 10-25 years ago.

I’ve unearthed diaries, letters and other mementos and spent time reading them. It is fascinating to have such a clear record of what I was thinking and feeling so long ago!

It’s good to reflect on how I believe I’ve grown, mellowed and matured over the years since then. But it’s also true that some things just don’t change.

As an example, I thought I’d share a snippet of something I wrote almost 25 years ago – complete with the doodled sketches that graced (dis-graced?) those pages. :)

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Dreaming of World Peace

Filed Under: Journeys, Reflections, Resources, Stories · September 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment ·

World peace .. does that sometimes seem an impossible dream?

Maybe.

We’re all human. We get cranky and annoyed. People irritate us – their actions hurt or anger us. And certain events in our lives lead to feelings of devasting pain, grief or anger.

We’ve all seen the effects of these things, either in our own lives or those of others around us. Depression, illness, substance abuse, violence – the list goes on.

And on a larger scale, deep hurt and anger can infect a household, a community or a nation. The cost of this is immeasurable in terms of human suffering.

But imagine what it might be like if, individually, we could transcend those feelings? What if, one by one, we could somehow find our own peace? And follow that up by reaching out a helping hand to heal the hurt and anger of those around us?

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Holding the Centre

Filed Under: Reflections, Stories · September 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment ·

I’ve just finished reading Iran Awakening, by Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

Subtitled A Memior of Revolution and Hope, it is an inspiring read!

As I read, I was struck by the way in which Shirin Ebadi ‘holds the centre’ – that sometimes painful space where we stand in the centre of contradictions and paradox, yet resist the always present temptation to ‘take sides’ – to retreat to the more ‘comfortable’ space of certainty that one ‘side’ is more correct or more true.

As a lawyer and a speaker, she works tirelessly in the name of justice and she is certainly ‘on the side’ of justice and fairness in all respects – that much is evident.

But, although she abhors the injustices done to people by the various governments of Iran as well as those perpetrated by US intervention in her country, she nevertheless manages to remain ‘at the centre’.
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