The power of positive example
Question from the Internet:
“How can I bring positive changes to my environment without being in power?”
We can all do this through an obvious, “shining” positive example.
There is a beautiful story about a little boy walking on the beach, finding thousands of starfish stranded out of water. So he starts throwing them back into the sea one by one. An adult comes up to him telling him, “what you are doing is futile, you can’t help all the starfish”. The little boy answers, “but I can help the ones I throw back”. So he continues throwing them back one by one. After a short pause, the adult silently turns around and starts following the little boy, throwing stranded starfish back into the water one by one. In a few minutes, more and more people join in the action — until all the starfish are returned to the sea.
We just simply abandon all our usual excuses and doubts and simply start acting in a positive way towards others without even waiting for any acknowledgment, reward or even feedback. We simply have to trust the “system” in a way, that if we truly believe that our actions are good and useful, then people will start following it.
After all, we live in a “good and benevolent” Natural system where life is created and sustained. This means that there are laws of Nature that facilitate good, life-facilitating actions while drowning out opposite, harmful actions.
We can see how our present civilization — that is against life, behaving like metastasizing cancer — is gradually broken down, collapsing since it has no right to exist in Nature’s finely balanced, fully, mutually integrated system. If our own actions agree with Nature’s overall direction and its laws, our actions will be supported as if a clear, open path is opened in front of us. So it is not only other people that will support our positive example, but Nature’s forces will also facilitate and augment it.
Of course, it is easier to act positively when we already know what those positive and constructive actions are that Nature accepts and assists…