"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind".
-Mohandas Gandhi
Okay, so I feel inspired today. My fight is coming up soon in the Golden Gloves and I’ve been doing a lot of training so I haven’t had much time to write. Today however, I feel like I need to rest a bit after digging out my car from the snow storm last night. So let’s talk about some inspiring things!
Today we’ll talk a little about adaptability. Many mammals, human especially are extremely good at adapting. We are constantly influenced by our surroundings and the way society moves, we tag along. We cling to the values that are around us and make judgments based on our experiences in that society. For example, people who grow up in a starving nation in Africa may feel the world is a terrible place, but a child who grows up in Middle America might see the world as a wonderful place full of exciting experiences. The Poor African child may be concerned with getting the necessities of life like food, water, shelter, etc while the child growing up in Middle America has other concerns like entertainment and identity issues.
Neither is right or wrong, both children have adapted to their environment and the society that are being bought up in. There is no problem with different views of the world. After all, they come from different backgrounds. Now when values get deeper and more ingrained, that’s when problems begin to happen. Take religion for example. So many wars and so many countless deaths have come from disagreement over religion. Religion is like any deeply ingrained value such as politics, patriotism, social structures, culture, and race. People begin to form an identity based on these valued that they have developed over time, fearing that their belief systems might be wrong, so they fight to protect it without ever trying to understand it or even consider themselves ever being wrong. We all have certain values that we are ignorant and highly defensive about, even if we don’t know it or would not acknowledge it.
To be truly open minded will open so many different doors in our lives that we had no idea existed. We begin to understand each other’s needs and concerns and being to see the world as a whole instead of the separation, labeling, profiling we see today. Once we can overcome all the separation and understand that we are one, then we will really start moving the world in a better direction. It starts from within.
Love comes with the burden of hate. Think about it. If someone you love gets hurt or someone hurts them, how will you feel? Will you hate that person? Would you want that person to pay for what he did? What will this give you? Being able to control yourself in situations like this is the foundation of being proactive. Is there justice in vengeance? If there is, then we will live in this cyclical phenomena of fear, hate, vengeance, and greed. Think about short term versus long term. Vengeance is a short term solution for a long term problem. Maybe a little short term emotional satisfaction, but then what? What did you solve? Now there are people on the other side of the coin with just as much hate. To be able to think when the time is right and to act for the better of all with feeling and charisma, then we will begin to move towards the right direction. We have what it takes. Let’s weed through all the clutter, ignore all the noise and focus on what’s really important.
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