As I was pondering what to write on this week, I came across some thoughts from other writers that made me think a little differently. I always talk about how we need to make crucial decisions now to create a sustainable world. But then it struck me that we are not making choices for us now, but for all the generations that come after us. Do we leave them a world worthy of our efforts to build a new world or one that smacks of our complacency and fear of ineffectual hierarchical control that won over us.
Will our descendants think of us with gratitude or with derision? You cannot go into this kind of thinking with an egoic mind. The ego is looking for an approving voice, but the reality is that we are now making decisions on behalf of future people who will probably never know who we were. All they will see are the results of our decisions, and while some individuals might make great contributions, most of us will simply be names lost in the passage of time.
Blogger Mohsin Khurshid has a short piece that describes this well. “In 100 years like in 2123 we will all be buried with our relatives and friends. Strangers will live in our homes we fought so hard to build; and they will own everything we have today. All our possessions will be unknown and unborn; including the car we spent a fortune on; and will probably be scrap; preferably in the hands of an unknown collector.
Our descendants will hardly or hardly know who we were; nor will they remember us. How many of us know our grandfather’s father? After we die; we will be remembered for a few more years; then we are just a portrait on someone’s bookshelf; and a few years later our history; photos and deeds disappear in history’s oblivion. We won’t even be memories. If we paused one day to analyze these questions; perhaps we would understand how ignorant and weak the dream to achieve it all was.
If we could only think about this; surely our approaches; our thoughts would change; we would be different people.
Always having more; no time for what’s really valuable in this life. I’d change all this to live and enjoy the walks I’ve never taken; these hugs I didn’t give; these kisses for our children and our loved ones; these jokes we didn’t have time for. Those would certainly be the most beautiful moments to remember; after all they would fill our lives with joy. And some of us waste it day after day with greed; selfishness and intolerance. Every minute of life is priceless and will never be repeated; so, take time to enjoy; be grateful for; and celebrate your existence.”
I aspire not to have my life remembered a century from now as some guru, but to be remembered as one of nameless many that future generations will recall with gratitude for having made the effort to make a difference for a sustainable world. And the many of us working together collaboratively; with mindfulness; developing a new Economic paradigm that helped the world not exploit it; fostering new metrics that redefined what success meant for our communities; and with self-sufficient and resilient food and energy systems will stand testament to our contributions (My five items).
To do that will require that we talk and listen carefully to each other. We like to talk, but we don’t listen well at all. I have talked about how ‘active listening’ as a tool is valuable and can be easily learned (see links 1, 2, & 3). One aspect of becoming enlightened and self-actualized – authentic – is not only being true to yourself, but also to help others be true to themselves. Authentic people know their own intrinsic values and help others discover theirs. This is important if we are to live together peacefully. It’s not that we will always agree, but our go to response will be to discuss and understand, not to win and dominate any discussion.
Native American writer Ella Deloria talks about the value of listening (allowing silence): “We Indians know about silence. We are not afraid of it. In fact; for us; silence is more powerful than words. Our elders were trained in the ways of silence; and they handed over this knowledge to us. Observe; listen; and then act; they would tell us. That was the manner of living. With you (non-Indian); it is just the opposite. You learn by talking. You reward the children that talk the most at school. In your parties; you all try to talk at the same time. In your work; you are always having meetings in which everybody interrupts everybody and all talk five; ten or a hundred times. And you call that ‘solving a problem’. When you are in a room and there is silence; you get nervous. You must fill the space with sounds. So, you talk compulsorily; even before you know what you are going to say. White people love to discuss. They don’t even allow the other person to finish a sentence. They always interrupt. For us Indians; this looks like bad manners or even stupidity. If you start talking; I’m not going to interrupt you. I will listen. Maybe I’ll stop listening if I don’t like what you are saying; but I won’t interrupt you. When you finish speaking; I’ll make up my mind about what you said; but I will not tell you I don’t agree unless it is important. Otherwise; I’ll just keep quiet and I’ll go away. You have told me all I need to know. There is no more to be said. But this is not enough for the majority of white people. People should regard their words as seeds. They should sow them; and then allow them to grow in silence. Our elders taught us that the earth is always talking to us; but we should keep silent in order to hear her. There are many voices besides ours. Many voices…”
If we are to achieve my five items, or whatever essential steps you might take to develop self-sufficient communities, we have to learn to listen to achieve consensus, and not a bickering group of egoic individuals trying to be recognized as the saviors. Our present society encourages egoic individualism. The new communities will require we check our egos at the door and become active listening communities. Having said that, I make the point that authentic people are also sovereign individuals, but they work to care and share their gifts and talents (and we all have them) to help the whole. It’s about thriving individually and collectively. Imagine that kind of society; one in which we all bolster each other up to be the creative individual best we can be, instead of this dog-eat-dog world that most suffer from at this time.
We have some big decision to make now that require mindful responses instead of knee-jerk reactions, and I doubt that any one, or small number, of ‘leader(s)’ is going to be able to do that. The sustainability revolution is one where we all work together in peaceful accord with active listening, to set in place real sustainability policies that benefit a whole community, and not just to feather the coffers of corrupt hierarchies. The Great Healing is about liberating humanity from the shackles of destructive hierarchical control so life in all its forms is recognized and valued as contributors of a New Earth. Call me naïve, but I believe that we can resolve our global ecologcial , economic and political problems at the local level a lot easier than big bobble heads trying to do so – after all, they are invested in having these problems that benefit only them.
To Be Continued ……………..
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