Finding Courage.
Today, most of us in the western world live a modern lifestyle that revolves around technologies. We drive a lot of cars, fly a lot of planes, and flying even higher are a lot of satellites that enables us to go online with our phones. If we get hungry, we can open an app to order a Pizza made from ingredients from all over the world the world. If we get sick, possibly from eating too much pizza, we can call a cab to take us to the hospital so doctors can fix us up with some marvel of modern medicine that we probably can’t pronounce. We might even enjoy a cat video on YouTube while waiting.
In many ways, this is a pretty good life. To put things in perspective: for over 90% of our history, we lived by hunting and gathering and running from predators. And if we were to get sick from eating rotten berries, we had no hospitals to go to, and could end up dead.
So, in comparison to the world of our ancestors, this modern world we have built with the help of technology is awe inspiring; but, this modernity also comes with a dark side…
The same technologies behind those delicious pizzas are also poisoning our planet and destroying our ecosystem. And those pizzas… about half of us are too poor to afford them, and the rest of us are getting heart diseases from them. And as we become more virtually connected than ever, we are being driven part in real life. And the most crazy thing is that these problems, huge that they may be, are solvable problems. By that, I mean all of us can envision solutions to them… so why aren’t we doing anything??
Are we too busy making money to care about our planet? Are we too busy bickering and fighting to care about starving children? This doesn’t make sense because the last time I checked, compassion and empathy are still highly valued by most human beings! And I’m also not going to blame either “ignorance” or “technology”. We all know what’s going on in the world because we all have the Internet, and until I meet a Terminator in person, I’m going to maintain that we, human beings, are the creators, users, and stewards of technologies. So whatever destruction and suffering that is happening in the world, it’s on us.
Now, I don’t want to belittle these huge problems we are facing collectively. They’re not simple and they’re not straightforward. And I want to recognize that many of us ARE working hard to solve them. But for every one of us that are engaged in these issues, there are tens or hundreds or more of us that don’t seem to care very much about them. And this lack of caring, this apathy, lies at the root of our collection inaction.
Apathy happens when we run away from our empathy and vulnerability. We do this because we find it too painful to watch children starve, because we find it too shameful to admit that our lifestyle is choking our planet, and because we are afraid that we may fail even if we tried our best. So, we pretend to not see; we convince ourselves that somebody else is going to sort it all out.
How does this work exactly? Let’s say I’m an engineer. I know there are these huge problems in the world, but they are so complex and I have no idea how to start working on them, and if I can really make a difference. So instead of trying, I tell myself that “I’m only one engineer, and I can’t change the world by myself…” Then I go back to my comfort zone and work on the next gadget… maybe it’s an app that delivers pizza faster and cheaper. And maybe I would tell myself that I’m working on something that’s going to make some people’s lives better, and that, the pizza app, makes me a decent, caring human being.
But, beneath the façade of self-satisfaction, there are nagging doubts… maybe I haven’t tried as hard as I could… maybe my App is contributing to a transportation system that is killing our planet… maybe the pizza my App delivers is contributing to an unhealthy way of life that kills through diabetes and heart diseases.
Apathy is a willful choice; it is an act of cowardice, and the antidote is courage.
The word “courage” comes from the French word “cœur”; it means “heart”. If we are to tackle these huge, complex problems that we have, we need to start by learning to listen to our hearts. It means to empathize with the pain and suffering all around us [people, animals, plants, planet] even if it makes us vulnerable; it means to embrace our responsibility in creating them even if it makes us ashamed. By listening to our hearts, we will recognize what is truly unacceptable about this world and that will become the source of our courage.
The problems facing humanity are huge and complex and most of us don’t even know where to begin working on them. They are intimidating and rightfully so. But courage isn’t fearlessness. Courage is trying even if we are afraid, trying even if we don’t know how, trying even if we might fail. Courage is standing up to the status quo and saying bye to our comfort zones because our hearts desire a better world.
Remember that engineer in the earlier example? That used to be me. I wasn’t making a pizza app but I stayed in my technical silo because it was comfortable, because it was safe. Then three years ago, I became a father of this beautiful girl [photo of Myka], and I could no longer pretend to not see what’s going on in the world. My baby daughter became the source of my courage. I do my best to make a difference every day because I want to be able to look her in the eyes and know that I’ve done my best to give her a better world.
And I’m not alone in this. There are many of us out there already doing their best every day to make a difference in the world, and that’s because courage is in our DNA. That’s because to have courage is to be human.
What about you… What will you do?
