What will you do to make a better World?
Self-sacrifice is self-improvement, its most meaningful and lasting type
When we think about the New Year in the last few hours, many thoughts run through our heads. However, it is not surprising to find that the wishes and decisions that have crossed our minds are similar to many others. We want to make a better life for ourselves. Care about our health or study more. But these decisions on a collective level are representative of today’s highly individualistic culture, which considers happiness to be primarily a personal matter. Maybe it is better if we widen our view and make decisions that are important for others besides ourselves.
New Year’s resolutions are a bunch of wishful thinking. I am like that, but I hope to become like that. I wanted that before, but now I want to have this.
The premise of such decisions is that something needs to be fixed or improved. A person makes a promise to himself that this year will be better than last year.
Part of the nature of resolutions, especially for those of us who live in the sixty-degree north orbit, is not just about the new year ahead, but also about the past.
We think about the years we have lived so far, about all the promises we made and broke. Again, the moment of delivery comes and goes every other year. And every time with the sound of the cannon fire, our hearts fall. We are running out of time, what we consider gold.
Lewis Mumford, a historian, and philosopher, believed that the main engine of the industrial age was the clock, not the steam engine because human energy consumption and therefore any production is a function of time. From the beginning, the nature of the industry has been to make things happen on time. Everything in our life is subject to time, even love. And so are all the other essentials.
So in every cry of “Happy New Year!”, sad despair and a sense of eternal sorrow are repeated. We ask ourselves, will this year be better than last year? We are determined to make it so. We choose to be fitter, healthier, smarter, richer, more successful, popular, productive, handsome, and happier. And in this way, again and again, we pour water into the mill of this absurd and certainly hopeless cycle.
The problem with all these promises is that they are false. What will it matter to the big wide world if I lose weight, exercise, work harder, or quit smoking and drinking?
Quit smoking or smoking three packs a day, exercise every day, or let go, it’s my choice, it’s my life, my small life. Instead, the big world — a hurtful, self-destructive, polarized, weird world — is spinning and spinning and my tiny decisions are getting nowhere.
What would happen if, instead of focusing on sports movements, we were determined to see all the undesirable human movements such as war, bigotry, cruelty, and looting of the planet and seek to eliminate them? What if instead of watery goals, we gave ourselves to honest commitments?
In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote, “This is what you must do: love the earth and the sun and the animals, take wealth for nothing, give alms to everyone who asks, and defend the lunatic and the lunatic.” He continues, “Reexamine everything you were told in school or church or any book, reject everything that offends your soul, and then your very flesh and skin will sing a great poem.” He said, “if you’re looking for a value proposition, Whitman isn’t a bad place to start.”
The mission of a better world may seem impossible, but it is not. All it takes is the right sequence of separate, correct decisions. Decisions are the same covenants that have a lot of force and have a guarantee of execution.
One of our editors told me a story about his childhood on his grandparents’ farm in Iowa. The little boy who was looking at the acres of corn field asked his grandfather, “How are we going to gather all this corn?” “One row at a time,” said his grandfather.
To improve the world, it is possible to follow this path. Let’s start small.
I vow to visit the children’s hospital regularly and try to distract the children with stories, and the funnier the better. I vow to call every lonely person I know at least twice a week — and they are not few — just to chat and make them feel part of the world of the living. I pledge to give charity to anyone who asks, and to those who don’t want it, and to defend the lunatics and madmen, and the more lunatics and lunatics the better. I promise to take care of the homeless (cats, dogs, and people) and give them safety and comfort. I promise to see every mistake as a threat, and every wound as an opportunity.
What will you do now, this week, and this month to improve the world? For example, start a protest. Make up for a wrong or offer friendship in one letter (and how powerful a thoughtful, compassionate letter can be to a friend in grief or turmoil). take a hand Say something that is a source of comfort, inspiration, support, and love. Give money or, most importantly, your time. There are many ways to rock this world, right around the corner.
Of course, the beautiful irony of all this is that self-abnegation is not the opposite of self-promotion. Incidentally, self-sacrifice is self-improvement, its most meaningful and lasting type.
If you practice this, you will find that this year you will really be one step ahead of last year. You may suddenly feel that this work has made you look and feel better than any diet or exercise. Light weight of any kind. Lighter than ever, it’s like you’ve lost weight.
Practice this and you will suddenly see how big your little life has become. A big life, a great life, is art. And it cannot be achieved unless the artist in his big and funny dreams, like Whitman, seeks with glorious irony to improve all things and cure all pains and is not satisfied with anything less.
A couple of months ago, at an event, someone asked me why I wrote such and such an article, and I simply answered: “to save the world”. And it was funny, ridiculous, and real.
