By Renee Shay, Harvesting Thought
–explore–
Let us face it, there appears to me that there is not much different in the world. Most things happening have happened before and most things about to happen have happened before. Who has not heard the phrase, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?” Doesn’t that feel like the story of our lives, like life itself on most days?
What we do as human beings and how we respond to our world is not unique. When conflict arises, we pick sides. It all comes down to making decisions about who we stand with and who we stand against. It is a natural survival mechanism. We look for similarity in others and latch onto them so that we can build up a wall of protection and resistance toward whatever threat we are facing. Let us call it for what it is, strength in numbers. It is as old as civilization, as old as humanity, as old as life itself. It exists in the animal kingdom, it exists in humans, and it exists in our DNA. Of course, we can put different names to it, but it is all the same. From the word, “tribe” to the word “party” to the phrase, “my people,” it ends up in the rawest sense, the same; me and you, us, and them.
–challenge–
Does that mean that nothing ever changes? Does that mean that there is no hope for things to be different? Does that mean we are doomed to repeat the past around every corner of our future? No, it does not. There is hope and we can change. Having conflict, you and me, us, and them, that will stay constant, that will not change, that is natural. But what can change is our reaction to it, our resistance to fight conflict with all our old tools. That is where change can happen, that is where the space for mutation of our actions can breathe and give us new life, new direction and renew our confidence in humanity.
Have you ever met someone who has had what is called a “spiritual awakening?” Where something takes place in their world so profound that it has changed the course of their life, most often for the good? A moment so amazing that it changed years of destructive patterns that had previously destroyed every aspect of their lives and relationships with family, friends, and their health. Something changed, and their life began moving in a new direction that ended the war going on within themselves and restored health and connection with their world. Well, I can tell you, that day of change, that one instant of change, often comes in a flash so quick that one thought, one different action over another, the awakening would not have happened.
-expand–
Guess what, those life-altering experiences most always happen on just another ordinary day like today. How often a person awakens and says, “I want to change today” and within seconds, minutes, hours, or days they go right back onto the same old, same old ways of being in the world? I can tell you; change does not conveniently happen on the extraordinary days of our lives; it occurs in the same 24 hours as the day before and the same 24 hours following today. While there are things in our lives that will always be the same old, same old, that keep repeating and are as natural as life itself, as natural as our DNA, it does not mean that on a normal day like today, like right now, now, when we least expect it, something extraordinary can happen that alters the course of our lives for the good of me and you, us and them.
Harvesting Thought 