I am off tomorrow to be in that place where hearts break open with every breath and miracles unfold with every heartbeat. I am off to coach at Choices for five days.

I am happy.

I am excited.

I am relieved.

Yesterday, at a team meeting, Mary Davis, Choices founder Thelma Box‘s daughter and the facilitator of the program, asked the group, “Why do you commit so much time to volunteering at Choices?”

Everyone of the 8 – 10 core team members present shared along similar lines.

We love being in a place where miracles unfold, and, where we get to live on purpose, every moment of every day.

I also like being in a place where I know everyone around me is supporting me in contributing my best, just as I am supporting them.

It is easy in the busy, crazy, schedule-driven competitiveness of everyday living to criticize, condemn and complain. My hair’s a mess, the price of gas too high, too low. I can’t find a parking spot — really, does that guy have to take up two spots? Governments are blind, bosses are stupid, co-workers lazy. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket. The world is falling off its axis.

It’s easy to see and speak of what’s wrong, what’s not working and what we’d do to make it different, better, other than what someone else is doing.

It’s also easy to forget that those we criticize did not get up this morning and say, “I’m off to do a horrible, piss-poor, really rotten job at whatever I do today. I’m off to make the world a worse place than it already is.”

I don’t believe any (or at least the majority) of us get up with the intention of creating worse. I believe we set out into our days to create better, or, in some cases to at least uphold the status quo if only so we don’t have to face the consequences of the changes we’d like to avoid.

Why is it then, that at water-coolers, in quiet corners, on transit buses or where ever two or more of ‘us’ are gathered, conversations often focus on what others are doing so badly, at least according to us?

When I get up in the morning I make a conscious decision to contribute my best throughout the day.

When I criticize, condemn and complain, I am not contributing my best.

So, if a + b = c, when I engage in C I am undermining my best and robbing myself and the world around me of the very things I want to contribute to make the world a better place. Engaged in the 3C’s I am actively engaged in doing the opposite of what I want to do because, whether actively engaged in A or B, I am making a contribution to the world. The one I focus on the most determines the outcome of my efforts.

Which do I want it to be?

I am off tomorrow morning to contribute my best in a place where the vision is to “change the world one heart at a time.”

It’s a big job, but, the more of us engaged in changing hearts and minds to see we are human beings filled with infinite possibilities and the capacity to create the world we’ve always dreamed of, the more possibility there is of living in the kind of world we dream of. The kind of world where Love and peace and compassion and joy and harmony co-exist without fear of being condemned for the colour of our skin, the God or gods we do or don’t worship, the pedigree of our family tree, the depth of our pockets and the trajectories of our past.

The more of us who give up the 3Cs, the less we’ll be contributing our worst and the more time we’ll have to give everything we do and say and create our best.

I’m off to coach at Choices. See you next Monday.