Social Change is Personal Change

Sometime’s I’ll hear the same wisdom over and over again and I think to myself “Yes! That’s so true!”, and yet my actions never seem to reflect the truth.

The latest that I’ve noticed is the idea that if you want to improve the world, the best place to start is by improving yourself.

It makes sense every time that I think about it: Your values are constantly being shared with the people around you through how you talk, act, and create.

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” ― Robert M. Pirsig

“I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride. — William James”

We are one with this world. You can’t improve yourself without improving the world around you. I stray so often from this fact and end up trying to force the things around me to be better, not realizing that it’s myself that I should focus on, not the things around me.

When the time for action comes, it will flow effortlessly, and the problems will solve themselves.

But first, I know I need to focus on solving myself.

Social change is personal change.

I hope I don’t forget this again.