You are actually really quite silly, didn’t you get the memo? If you would like I will email it to you, put it in bold festive green and red letters so you can read it for yourself. Read it Out Loud.
You Cannot, Will Not, Change The World.
You won’t. I promise you this. Stop trying. Give it up. Bury it. Let’s move on…
If someone has already told you this, that you are too small to make a difference, then good. Great. Made my job a lot easier.
Ok, so since we have established that this world won’t be better because of our presence, where do we go from here? What’s next?
Well, you can stop holding the door open for people to start. Quit being on time to those coffee dates, close your ears when that other person is talking. Give up that whole “treat others as you would want to be treated” cliche. Seriously. If you are going to forget anything, forget those words. Or better yet, forget smiling. Practice pursing your lips in public. And don’t talk so much, don’t clog the world up with your dreams that will never come true and your “visions” for a better tomorrow.
Now we really need to discuss this living out loud notion. It’s Christmastime. Lucky for us we are in the perfect position to find a box to stuff ourselves within. You heard me, we need to find the smallest, most compact box to shove our dreams and souls inside of. Why? Well because that is where we belong in this world that will never be different. Why try to convince yourself that you were born to live outside of the box that the world wants to put you in? Who are you to believe that?
You see, we need to shift the focus. It is time to start talking about ourselves. We have some egos to pump, people. You really should think about a better wardrobe. I really should get a haircut before I leave the house. We both really should devote more time to our imperfections and our flaws if we ever want to be productive. That energy no longer belongs to sculpting the world, right? Take Looks and obsess over those for now. You can actually touch that kind of stuff, we cannot exactly say the same for poverty or literacy. So let’s just focus on what we can touch…
And speaking of ourselves (which we need to be doing a lot more of), make sure that your friends and family know exactly what you want for Christmas. Don’t let them mess up your holiday by screwing up the colors or the sizes.
I think I should have called a meeting for this one. To lay down the rules. To suggest this better way of life where we stop focusing on making this world a better place. The Grinch was a smart one, he got this whole “shrink your heart down three sizes” thing long before any of us did.
I have a better idea, we could have a meet up after two weeks or so and see how we all feel.
But I am going to warn you, there will be someone there to wreck the meeting. There is always someone to wreck the meeting. She will run in a few minutes late, apologize profusely before she sits down to gather herself. She will look Frazzled but Happy. Wild but Glowing.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she will say a few more times. “I was volunteering for the morning and it ran late.”
“Didn’t you get the memo?” we will ask her, “You cannot change the world.”
“Oh yea, I got that memo. I hear that stupid memo every single day. It doesn’t mean that I actually listen to it. They weren’t right when they said happiness was a pair of size zero jeans or that a guy would complete me, why would they be right now?”
We will want to say something but we will be too entranced by her liveliness, the way she fuels the room with her energy. Energy we are all dying to have at this point.
“Y’all might have stopped but I just picked up the pace. I opened more doors for others, I listened more intently to stories, I offered better advice, I poured my heart out all over the place.”
“But it makes no difference,” I will finally speak up. “You cannot change the world. We already established this. Why bother?”
“Maybe I won’t. Maybe I won’t. But how will we ever know if we never try? We don’t really get to decide how long we will have on this earth and we only have one shot to fill it all in. All that I know is that I have a blank to fill. A Song to Sing. A Poem to Write. A Hand to Hold. A melody in my heart that I never needed to learn the words to, I have known the song all along. And this is how I decided that there is no point in figuring out how you got the words or where the words came from, all that you should do is sing the song. That is what the world needs most from you. To Sing The Song That Only Your Heart Knows.”
“If you listen to that memo all of your life you will certainly find your soul to be sunken. Haven’t you realized by now, the second you become a firework people will decide whether they want to follow your spark or put out your flame. Hopefully the naysayers will one day see, you made a bigger impact by putting your energy into lighting the fireworks of others. Far bigger than the energy they wasted in trying to put out your flame.”
We will all be taken aback by this Girl who never listened to the Naysayers of this world. The Girl who decided that people would criticize every single day for the Small Efforts with the Big Impact. And she could either listen and drown in a sea of negativity or learn to float while teaching others to swim in the very same sea. She could have very well listened to all the cruelty but she chose to live a different way.
For when we all stopped. She Started. When we all blinked, she Opened Up Her Eyes. When we all found tomorrow to be a good day to change the world, she had already started yesterday.
Maybe she will never change the world but she would feel very silly if she never even bothered to try.
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