The World Is Indeed Changing
Guest Editorial - Vicki Robin, President, New Road Map Foundation
Here's how I start the day. I wake up, drink tea, reflect on life, greet the (non) sun (I live in Seattle) from my door stoop, pick up the paper, open it up and get mad. "I don't believe it!" "How could they be so stupid?" "Oh, no, not this!" I do it as my dour civic duty, determined to live in this world. After 5 minutes of whipping through the first section and glancing over the editorial page, I settle down and get on with my little corner of "world changing."
Yesterday was different. I almost wept when I read the lead headline: "Canada acts to protect forest; large-scale plan to guide land use would safeguard a billion birds." One quarter! of Canada's land mass (nearly 5% of the remaining forest on Earth) will be off-limits to logging and development. The rest of Canada's boreal (northern) forest will be harvested selectively and sustainable.
The adjacent headline was also to weep for. Unocal is being sued for using Myanmar's military regime to provide security for a natural gas pipeline project in the remote Yadana region near the Thai border. I just got back from team teaching a course on "Simplicity and Social Change" with Thai activist and engaged Buddhist, Sulak Sivaraksa, who has put his body and resources on the line protesting that very project. We've all suspected the link between multi-national corporations and the military. We've all grieved the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi. But front page headlines?
So, before people who know more than I do say, "This all is too little too lateÉ or too much too soon"É I want to celebrate with you that the world is indeed changing. Our quiet as the grass collective work towards a sane, healthy, just and delightful world is actually pushing up through the concrete of the rigid, unresponsive and money-soaked institutions that have "paved over" our living systems. Yay grass! Yay youÉ and me.
Harold Thurman Whitman wrote, "Don't ask yourself what the world needsÑask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Take heart in your own story of courage and in knowing that the pavement is cracking as we speakÉ
Vicki Robin is President of the New Road Map Foundation and co-author of the best-selling book, Your Money Or Your Life. She is a leading light of the "voluntary simplicity" movement. For more information and celebrations about changing the world, go to: http://www.newroadmap.org and http://www.worldchanging.com
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