Who do you choose to be?

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No. 35 #ShePersisted series.
http://louisegallagher.ca/shepersisted

I read the news today, oh boy. (Thank you John Lennon and The Beatles)

About nuclear weapons, loaded and locked.

About a car crashing into a crowd.

About Taylor Swift’s court battle.

And about so much more of what is wrong in our world today.

And I felt sad. Upset. Helpless. Alone. Frightened.

I do not live well in those spaces.

I do not feel the pulse of life calling me to create, to dance, to laugh and sing when I am reading the news.

I think I’ll give up reading the news and do what Margaret Wheatley suggests in “Who do we choose to be? Facing reality, claiming leadership, restoring sanity.

“Who do you choose to be for this time? Are you willing to use whatever power and influence you have to create islands of sanity that evoke and rely on our best human qualities to create, produce and persevere?”

Hell Yah!

Reading the news gives me too much room to dive into the insanity. Creating opportunities for the news to be filled with hope, love, joy, caring — now that’s the kind of island of sanity I want to create.

I am not powerful enough to stop nuclear bombs from flying.

I am powerful enough to give my voice to those who would ban nuclear weapons from our earth.

I am not powerful enough to stop a car crashing into a crowd.

I am powerful enough to speak up in the face of discrimination, misogny, brutality, and all forms of racism.

I am not powerful enough to stop every man from raping women, whether in peace time or in war.

I am powerful enough to stand with my sisters, my fellow human beings who believe we each deserve to be treated with the same kind of dignity, respect, kindness, compassion and love we give to others.

I am powerful enough to create an island of sanity in my world where love, hope, joy, compassion exist for all.

And in my standing up and creating such a space, I connect to those who are doing the same, and our ripple will become a tsunami of love, hope, joy, compassion for all the world to know and believe in and live in.

And no matter how many people say, it just isn’t so, I shall persevere. I shall persist.

Namaste.

 

 

9 thoughts on “Who do you choose to be?”

  2. I was just sitting out on my patio – in the early morning rain – not channeling Lennon; more like Lightfoot – but mostly I was brought back to life by the source of life itself. Water, falling as rain, makes all life possible. If every you feel powerless, sit out in the rain for a few minutes and every good thought you’ve ever had will come back to you, and you’ll remember that every bad thought, bad deed and bad idea will come and go and be washed away again. Not to say any of those bad things are good, but when they recur from time to time they remind us – ought to – that we are so privileged to be alive here and now. Hate, evil and horrors should be stopped – all of them. And, compared to any time in history, we have fewer of them than ever. Zero is still the goal. When it doubt, sit out in some early morning rain. And when it stops, as always, birds sing …

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