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Today's
Meditation:
It would be
so nice to leave a better world for our young people, but
I fear that hasn't been happening. Unfortunately, it
looks like the world my generation will be leaving behind
is one that's in dire straits, a world that's on a path of
destruction rather than construction, a world that may not
even be able to sustain most forms of life because of the
ways that we've treated it. Many of us plant seeds
and crops and do our best to leave behind a beautiful
place, but many of us do nothing but take, damaging the
planet in the process.
And
that's not limited to the physical planet itself.
We're more divided than ever on national scales in many
countries, and we tend to argue more than we help each
other. We fear change more and more instead of
embracing it, and we fear diversity more than we ever
have. Peace? Love? Togetherness?
Unity? Those seem more and more like words from the
past, and not concepts that we're pursuing in the present.
But
we can't give up, of course. We must still focus on
giving, on passing on the best that we possibly can.
We can't give in to despair-- we must continue to harbor
and cultivate hope. There's still a very good chance
that we can pass on better things than we were given, that
we can share true progress instead of regression, but it's
up to us to keep that possibility alive by doing all we
can to contribute to the positive in this world so that it
will grow and flourish in our care.
When
we focus solely on ourselves and what we want to get out
of life, then our worlds become small and cramped.
It's important that we focus instead on the legacy that
we're leaving, the world that we're passing on to our
young, so that we can make positive contributions to that
world in order to provide them with a beautiful, positive
world instead of a world that holds little beauty and
that's been decimated by their predecessors-- us.
Let's do our best to pass on flowers that have bloomed in
our care instead of the waste of our mistreatment and
abuse.
Progress is about making our world a better place,
period. It's not about getting more riches or
destroying more forests. It's not about building
more and bigger buildings, but making sure that the
buildings we have serve the most good that they can.
Progress is about making the world a more loving and
accepting place, rather than fostering people's suspicions
and anger and hatred. We need a world full of
progress rather than regression, and we're not doing a
very good job of fulfilling that need-- though we
definitely can. Our job is to find ways of making
progress possible.
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