Week 7: How Do You Create Change?

Time to read: 58 seconds

Goodness, owls are cute!

All summer we've been talking about feeling well-used and being responsible for creating your life. I want to shift to how this applies to living in a chaotic world where it seems like people have lost their decency.

You can't choose the news cycle. You don't choose the driver who cut you off, how a stranger talks online, or whether the world gets kinder this year. If you could change these things, you would have a long time ago.

Here's what you are responsible for: how you treat the person in front of you.

That sounds small next to the size of national politics. It's the most important lever you have to enact real change, and it matters. Every interaction you have is a chance to either add to the noise or subtract from it.

Being the change doesn't mean fixing the world. It means refusing to let the world's worst behavior become an excuse for your own. Someone is going to be rude to a service worker today. It doesn't have to be you. Someone is going to assume the worst about a stranger today. It doesn't have to be you.

You're not responsible for how the world behaves. You are entirely responsible for how you do.

I find this concept liberating.