DO YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

The challenge

"Having lived, studied and worked in many different countries for almost 40 years, I have enjoyed getting to know different cultures, religions, and above all, different people. One of the conclusions I have drawn from all these experiences is that the interesting differences we can observe between us really represent just a very thin, superficial layer, and that underneath there exists a common human dimension where we are all the same and where we share the same basic need to feel good about ourselves and others. I have also become convinced that the lack of peace and harmony in the world is a collective expression of the individual inner turmoil and anxiety that most people live with today.

An old Chinese proverb says:
When the soul is nourished, the individual becomes beautiful,
when the individual is beautiful, the home becomes harmonious,
when the home is harmonious, the country becomes orderly,
when the country is orderly, the world becomes peaceful.

The upbringing and education we received taught us to how to aquire knowledge and to produce, but in many ways not how to live. Transformed into human "doings", we live absorbed by the rational and material (and digital), with little time for our emotional and spiritual needs. We therefore lose touch with the deeper dimensions of ourselves and life and thereby miss the opportunity to consciously experience our common humanity and the universal connection that exists between everything and everyone.

The result is a world of "malnourished souls" who are unable to show their true, constructive nature, and instead express themselves in a distorted way through depression, anxiety, stress, illness, conflicting families and unjust and inhuman societies. It is as if we were an orchestra with 7 billion instruments trying to play harmoniously together, but the result is mostly noise and very little music because the majority of the instruments are out of tune.

Therefore, the changes needed to create a better world must begin with an individual, personal development process where each one of us does what is necessary in our professional and personal lives to "tune the instrument" so that we become better at creating harmony within ourselves and together. We must learn to create families, workplaces and communities where the soul can be nourished.

Being proactive and taking initiatives to improve how we feel about ourselves and how we treat each other is the strongest power we have to change the world for the better".