What kind of world do you want?
Photo by Kushagra Kevat
I admit it, I am a big fan of emotional video montages. You know – the kind that they show at rehearsal dinners, bat mitzvahs, and birthday parties. Yep, photos and videos set to cheesy (and inspirational) music get me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Without fail, just one minute in, I’ve got a tear trickling down my cheek and I’m coo-ing along with everybody else. A picture of siblings holding hands? There goes a tear. A picture of a couple sharing a smile? There goes another. You get the picture, right?
So last weekend, at the bar mitzvah party of my friends Dana and Todd’s son Toby, I had another one of those mini montage-inspired meltdowns. Now, to be fair, Todd is a professional videographer, so this montage was epic. (Conan O’Brien and Wolf Blitzer made cameos!). And seeing photos of this beautiful family together over the years had me reflecting on how my own family’s times together seem to keep racing by. But what stuck with me most over the past few days since seeing this particular montage was the message in the very first song (“World” by Five for Fighting). Sappy? Sure. Inspirational lyrics? Definitely.
“What kind of world do you want?
Think anything.
Let’s start at the start.
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now.”
For whatever reason, those words, coupled with the photos of that family on the screen, really hit home. My eyes became faucets and my heart felt full. The power of the images framed by the words made me stop and think to myself:
What kind of world do I want? And what would it look like if I really just focused on building that particular masterpiece?
What’s striking about the question is its positive, constructive approach. There is nothing negative, nothing fearful, about it. When we start to think of what we WANT to create, as opposed to what we want to fight against, then we can focus our energy more clearly, and we can bring more people along with our vision.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t things to fight against. Of course there are. On a daily basis we are reminded of aspects of our world that need repairing: the state of our environment, health crises, income inequality, racism and anti-Semitism, and the list goes on. Some of us wake up in the morning and feel a strong urge to fight for what we need for our families, our communities, our countries, and the world. We see ourselves as warriors for the necessary and the good, and we knock down the barriers and bullies that get in our way.
But perhaps a different mindset might help us harness our positive emotions and the inspired allyship of those around us.
What if we started each day thinking about ourselves as artists, and working not only on creating visions of change, but using our hours and days (or at least parts of them) to create brushstrokes for the masterpieces of change we want to create?
Of course not everybody has the time to create masterpieces that can solve big world problems, like global warming and income inequality, but we all have the ability to optimistically create something small… maybe a thumbnail sketch or a picture postcard of a possible future. And then with that vision, we can “start at the start” with a small reminder of the daily/weekly/monthly actions we can take to build the world we truly want. We can spend more time with our families, we can stop using single-use plastics, we can try to help provide resources to the homeless by making a contribution to a worthy organization. You get the idea, right?
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in remembering what we don’t want our world to be like that we forget to spend time thinking about the world we DO want. And there is no time like the present to start thinking about the world that you, and all of us, want to live in.
Because history starts now.
Questions for reflection:
Write a paragraph that starts with the phrase: “The world I want to live in is a world in which….” (Try to be as detailed as possible, and feel free to include more than one vision/desire.)
Have you ever shared that vision with someone else? Or shouted it out for the world to hear? If not, why? And why not do it now? (I, for one, would love to hear your #TheWorldIWant vision.)
What are some actions you are taking to make that vision a reality? Are you doing it on a monthly basis? Weekly? Daily?
Find one picture that captures the world you want to live in. It could be a personal photo or something you find online or in a magazine. Pin it somewhere you can see it regularly as a reminder to keep working on your masterpiece.