We Can Change the World. We just need to Grow Up.

I grew up thinking we had learned our lessons and had moved on from the time of genocide and world wars. In my formative years of the 80’s and 90’s, there was relative peace in the world. I remember the grand celebration of events like the fall of the Berlin Wall and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

Events that spurred reflection about how far we had come.

But in the last year, these have been the headlines:

“Britain votes to leave the European Union”

“130 killed in suicide bombers and terrorist attacks in Paris”

“20 killed brutally in a terror attack in Dhaka”

“32 killed and over 300 injured by terrorists in Belgium”

“44 people killed in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport”

“Orland nightclub shooting leaves 49 dead and 53 injured”

“84 people killed and 300 injured in Nice terror attack”

In July 2016 alone there were 166 listed terror incidents around the world.

It’s not just the violent acts of intentional homicide that’s making me shudder. It’s the outpouring of hate evident in our mere communication and relationships with each other:

“Ghostbuster Leslie Jones tweets ‘personal hell’ of shocking racist abuse, leaves Twitter”

“Jamaicans being turned back from Trinidad and being treated by animals”

The bitter and brutal social media battles between the #blacklivesmatter #bluelivesmatter and #alllivesmatter camps

Something is not right and it is scary. It’s as if we’ve turned the dial to a frequency of division and hate and we don’t know how to change it back.

Remember when the year 2012 came and there was talk about the dawning of a new level of consciousness? I was one of those hippies celebrating that the planet was soon to be skipping down a path lined with rose petals of a new way of thinking. But, it is evident that instead we’ve taken a wrong turn.

Where is all this anger and hate coming from?

In a recent article Eckhart Tolle theorised that, “The false self is never happy or fulfilled for long. Its normal state is one of unease, fear, insufficiency, and nonfulfillment. It says it looks for happiness, and yet it continuously creates conflict and unhappiness. In fact, it needs conflict and "enemies" to sustain the sense of separateness that ensures its continued survival. Look at all the conflict between tribes, nations, and religions. They need their enemies, because they provide the sense of separateness on which their collective egoic identity depends.”

Did the lull of relative peace and stability make us scared that we were getting too close to each other and suddenly want to assert our identities through conflict?

Or is it that this downward spiral is a natural dip on our evolutionary roller coaster? “It’s darkest before the dawn,” as they say.

I had an experience the other day that supported the latter theory.

(Warning, I’m going to launch into a seemingly unrelated story, but just hang in there…I will connect the dots. I promise!)

Like most people I revere my iPhone 5 like a limb: it goes with me everywhere but I try to protect it at all costs. Of course, I had a protective case and screen on it. However after a year, it’s had its share of drops and the screen had become cracked in a few places with a major sliver down the middle. But it was still functional and it didn’t look that bad, so I avoided investing the money to get it fixed. Then one day I was on a run, where I needed to hold up my phone to get directions to a park. Running while looking at your phone is hazardous, right?!

So, I tripped…. Duh!!

Actually, my phone and I did a synchronised face-plant into the concrete sidewalk. A part of my left knee was gutted, that I could live with.

But the state of my phone was cause for a panic attack. The sliver had multiplied a hundred times over into a massive spider web of cracks. I got splinters in my fingers when I touched it. It was officially no longer functional.The hand of fate forced me to shell out to finally get it fixed.

Have you ever waited until something got painfully bad and absolutely dysfunctional before you fixed it? It’s starting to look like that’s the collective subconscious program we’re operating from.

But what are we waiting for? A terrorist attack where thousands of innocent people die, extinction of entire species due to bad waste management, melting ice poles to inundate entire islands? Wait … isn’t that already happening?

So what does really, really bad have to look like?

More importantly, as you and I watch humanity’s slow descent, what can we do in our day-to-day lives to avert this self-inflicted Armageddon?

Since thoughts are energy, my theory that we’ve tuned into a discordant energetic frequency is potentially on point. I believe that this is where the seat of our power lies: In our ability to change the channel in our own heads. To recognise when we’ve tapped into the current of anger, hate and a spirit of divisiveness and choose differently in that moment, whether it’s voting for president or having an argument with a friend. To do that, you just need to be present and self-aware. You need to act like a grown-up and not get dragged by the torrent of emotion that made you through a tantrum when you were 5. It’s choosing your responses to conflict and doing as Michelle Obama suggests, “When they go low, we go high.” As each of us chooses to tap into that higher frequency more often, one becomes many, which can become a movement, which can then become the norm.

#Changetheworld #hope #thefuture #optimisim