Starry Eyed Mindfulness? |
Yet as we iterate forward, whether it be as peace forger, human rights activist, vegan advocate, relationship builder, or environment restorer, we will walk among peers who will disagree with making ethical progress in favor of keeping old ways sacred and unchanged when those ways no longer make sense. This will cause friction, and in many cases fire, whether it take the form of incendiary commentary, peer rejection or government inertia. We also must confront internal conflicts, both within our progressive groups and within ourselves. Such is the challenge of robust progressive change.
Much of the solution to this challenge is an ongoing effort for our activism to embrace maturity, empathy, and rationality. Forgiving culturally seeded ignorance can be difficult, especially while persevering ever forward to continually re-evaluated, higher goals. By lifting our minds above the petty, yet often understandable, feelings of anger, possessiveness and even vengeance, we can remain engaged in the hard work aimed at more ethical outcomes that will benefit the entire world.
Importantly, forgiveness of ones own past and flawed behavior is part of this continual pursuit. Each of us was born into an imperfect world under a great variety of circumstances beyond our control. Which is why it is pretty darn wonderful that we have historical records to reflect on, written and spoken language to convey our ideas peacefully and competitive and cooperative means to purposefully execute them.
Forward to the future!
What other path is there?
alma@mail.postmanllc.net
ReplyDeleteForgiving is not any simple thing. There’s a quote attributed to each Buddha and Gandhi alongside the strains of, “Hating any one is like consuming rat poison expecting the other guy to die.” I get it intellectually, but man,here with the handful of people who attacked most viciously or professed to be neighbors but weren't it's taking severe dedication to move beyond mental figuring out to real forgiveness.
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