Looking at the news these days, admittedly, it is hard to stay calm. I have two young, beautiful daughters who with curious eyes ask me what is happening in Syria and why there is still so much war and fighting in the world. Both of them, when given the opportunity to make wishes, wish innocently for “world peace”. As a mother, I sometimes don’t know what to say to these innocent wishes. Surely I too can still remember the day when I too believed in the possibility of World Peace. And still much of what I do now has the aim of bringing enough happiness into this often lonely world so that through the “butterfly effect” we create a kinder, more loving world to live in.
This week it seems that spring time is finally coming to London: trees are blossoming with colourful flowers and grass is growing greener everyday. With the sun warming my face and people looking happier with the beginning bloom of spring, it can be hard to notice that a kind of madness seems to have taken over the world these past years. There is persistent war, incessant terrorism and a rise in overall violence. If that wasn’t enough, there are even children shooting other children and spouses killing each other. Not that violence is a new thing in our world of course, but how much of this kind of hate can we really stand?
We’ve had so many scares in the past decade, lived through terrorist attacks and constantly increasing incidences of instability, both in violence and in politics. Just in the past few years, we’ve chosen extreme politics as a cry for help to try to change this often crazy world, but so far it is not becoming less crazy.
We have no choice but to accept the times we live in and the complexity of issues surrounding us. We have to be able to open our eyes to the suffering of our time as well as to the world’s increasing loneliness and unhappiness, and through that acceptance turn our attention inwards and build that stability we seek from the outside, inside of us.
Perhaps it is only through acceptance and understanding of the nature of the world that we, humans, are ourselves responsible for creating, only then can true change occur and that change can only happen if it happens organically from within…
Imagine how much more our way the world will seen if we stop expecting others to change, behave better, be more rational and so on, but instead learn to accept them as they are (warts and all) and simply help them to become cognisant of their best selves so that they can reach and become that. We can also become our own stable pillars for ourselves, our children, family friends and the world. When the big picture starts to fail us, why don’t we try to narrow it down to what we have right in front of us and try to see the beauty of the world in that specific singularity: our child, our friends, our partner, our job, our home and, of course, ourselves.
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”
William Blake