You Cannot Change The World
Someone recently told me that I cannot change the world.
I immediately called bullsh!t. In fact, I got a little animated in my defiance of this statement.
I may not ever be able to change the world in the ways of people like Charles Darwin, Nelson Mandela, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, President Obama or even Donald Trump.
But, I stand here today and pronounce that if I do nothing else in my life, I will change the world for the better. At least I will change the my sphere of influence in the world.
However small or great that may be, I will leave a positive impact.
I don’t have lofty goals in life. Professionally, I will leave little legacy because I no longer have the ambition to even try to alter the course of my chosen profession. But, personally, I will do great things. It may be as simple as volunteering at a meal service for local homeless people, or it maybe just helping push a neighbours car out of the snow. Or maybe, all I will successfully do in my life is make sure my future child(ren) has a warm house, healthy food and access to safe health care and constant love. And so, if nothing else, I know I will always be a good person who does my best to be supportive and respectful of others.
I know I wont always get it right, but I will always try to. In fact, in my opinion, I have a moral obligation to myself and the rest of humanity to try my best.
And so, while I am not going to move mountains, am unlikely to start a political movement or create the next social movement, I am going to be dedicated in my efforts to inspire positivity and encourage kindness. I wont always be successful, I will stumble from time to time, but I believe my dedication to the effort is what really matters.
And while I may not change the entire world, I will be a good person. And in my books, that’s all that matters.
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Exactly! Love this and love that you called them out.
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Yes! This is THE way to think….and why we are friends 🙂 All of my dogs are adopted from the shelter and someone said that to me once too…”you know you can’t save them all”….and I just don’t understand how people can think that way??….what about that one that was saved? I think this quote pretty much sums it up…..”Saving one animal may not change the world, but for that one animal their world will change forever”…..and I feel that way about people too. Smiling at someone might make their day better….helping someone in whatever way you can….just being KIND to one another….what a different world we would live in if we ALL thought this way…..xoxo
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Love this post! You’re exactly right and I wish others thought this way too!
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Yours was a great comeback to a pretty cynical statement. Of course you can change the world – every day and every minute. I think of acts of kindness as drops falling into water – making ripples that spread out in all directions. Each person you treat well is more likely to turn around and do the same to another. If this sounds naive to the cynic, then there is another way to think about it. We are all not as disconnected as we seem to be. I read somewhere that you could take any two people on the planet and find a chain of people only seven or eight long to connect them (i.e. take Person A somewhere in Africa and Person G in Europe: A knows B who knows C who knows D who knows E who knows F who knows G. Chain complete.) Somehow, I believe this is true.
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You will change the world of your future child. That’s going to be a huge accomplishment 🙂
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The impact you have had on the world already is incredible! Sharing your story and your journey takes a whole lot of courage and I know you’ve inspired myself to do the same. And you’ll continue to make huge impacts through your children!
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Good Lord I hope NOBODY changes the world in the way Donald Trump wants to!!! LOL! But great post and sentiment nonetheless 😉
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Hahahaha! I totally agree about Donald Trump! I swear, if I had his money I’d be making a much different (and better) contribution to the world!
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If it matters at all…you inspire me and make me want to be a person pretty much every day. I look up to you a lot, and when I’m having a down day I think about you and all that you’ve been through, and how you’re typically still pretty positive about life. So, you may not be changing the whole world…but you do touch and change lives of those around you. ❤
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Love this post!! You are so right!
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Good for you for sticking up for them and there have been plenty of people that have changed the world who probably never thought they would.
I have always preferred to say, “I can change someone’s world”, even if I cannot change it permanently I can change it. It doesn’t have to be big, a little girl came in and her mother wanted to get the book Matilda so she could read it to her. She said, “If you don’t have it that’s okay we can just watch the movie”. I spent 5 minutes and found the book, it may not seem like a big thing, but I think that in enabling that little girl to experience literature rather than just read the movie I may have changed her world… at least for the weekend 🙂
My youngest niece adores me singing to her, she will crawl in my lap and ask me to sing her to sleep. She will run to the piano and ask me to sing with her. I have sung her to sleep since she was an infant. I hope that she always has the love of music she does currently.
A young man came into the Library today in a state because he had to get his application in to the defence force today as today is the cut off. He had no library card on him and the rule is no card no computer. Rather than send him on his way I helped him scan his documents and logged him onto a computer to send them. I certainly changed his world for this afternoon anyway.
My point is to never give up and keep striving to change the world. 🙂
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This reminds me of the “Starfish Story”, one of my all time favorites that I have told Mary and my niece several times. You do t have to make some huge, universal movement or create some trending hashtag! You just have to make a difference to one person, thing, place and you’ve made your small or huge dent in the world and hopefully inspire others to follow suit. The ripple effect. “A little girl goes to the beach and washed up on the shore are thousand of starfish. She thinks about how weird it is that hey are all there. The morning sun starts rising, and she realizes that all these washed up starfish will soon dry up and die if she doesn’t do what she can to get them back into the ocean. One by one, she picks up the starfish and starts chucking them back into the water. Pick up, and throw. Pick up and throw! Soon, a man is walking along the beach and noticed what the little girl is doing. ‘Little girl, don’t you see that there are hundreds of starfish?! You won’t be able to get them all back into the water before the noon sun dries them all up! What’s the point?! It won’t make a difference!!’ Without missing a beat, the little girl grabs a starfish, looks the old man square in the face, throws the starfish as far as she can back into the ocean and says, ‘Well, it made a difference to that one!'” You never know the difference or the change that you are making…make it anyway!
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