A short time before he was assassinated, Mohandas Gandhi was asked what his most key message was. His answer was short, to the point and oh so eloquent. His response? “My life is my message”.
When we look back at the life Gandhi led, it’s quite easy to understand his statement. In fact, examining the lives of all sorts of leaders, celebrities and spiritual figures will net the same kind of result. Yet, too often, each of us fails to recognize that EVERY life is a message too. It doesn’t matter how seemingly important or unimportant a life is. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich and powerful or poor and impotent.
Our lives are OUR messages to the world.
It’s not so much how we each comport ourselves in so-called defining moments. It’s not how we each choose to react to glowing successes, dismal failures or unexplained tragedy. No, it’s housed in the more mundane aspects of every day existence.
It’s how we treat others when no one else is looking. It’s how we relate to Mother Nature. It’s how we think silently inside our heads before springing or not springing into action. It’s who we are day in and day out.
What is your message to the world?
My message to the world is to accept and embrace change, rather than being afraid of it. Fear of change creates so many problems in the world. We fear when we ourselves change, we fear when others change, we fear when conditions around us change. If we learn to simply embrace change instead, life becomes simpler and we become clamer, able to deal with people and situations around us more easily.
In the winter, I feed the birds and provide this bird bath so they are able to find food and water easily. In summer, I will still fill the bird bath, since conditions around me are usually dry, but I will not fill the feeder. This way, the birds eat bugs in my garden. It’s an easy and effective natural form of pest control.
When my children were small, I fulfilled many of their needs. Now that they are older, they must learn to be resonsible young adults. Somewtimes I remind them that they need to fulfill their responsibilities, and they get angry at me. Oh well. I don’t rescue them, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions now, whether it’s repeating a class or payin gmore for insurance since they didn’t keep up their good student discount. It’s hard to let them learn these lessons, but they will.
Our country is in trouble because those in power don’t want to accept the changing realities of the world. They think they can control and create reality the way they want it to be. Others don’t want to accept their reality and react to the conditions that are imposed upone them. If we had leaders who accepted and embraced change, as Ghandi did, we might learn that those we consider powerless are not so powerless after all. They do have ways and means to fight our reality if we don’t consider their needs, and they will.
In our personal lives, not being accepting of change leads to conflict. We don’t want to realize our friends have changed, our spouse has changed, our children grow and change, our work has changed, we have changed. Any of these things can trigger a major crisis. We age and the issues of getting older become problems for us. The realities of death create problems for us.
The simple fact is, life is about change. Our response to change determines whether or not we can be happy in life. Embracing the changes we encounter, accepting them, and working with those changes rather than against them is the secret to enjoying life. We will either flow with the stream of life, or standing in the current, yell against the flow until we are swept away. And woe to us if we try to actually swim against that current. We will only tire ourselves out and end up exhausted.
Embrace change, flow with it, and move with the pace of life. That is my message.
3 Responses
It is a great message. 🙂
Yes, love the message–and your new look.
If more people had a message to the world similar to yours, this would be a much nicer place.