Change the World by Changing Yourself

 

 Helen Tang
August 11, 2005

 

 How ridiculous it sounds – how could one person change the world by changing himself? The world is humongous, and one is as one drop in the ocean, so insignificant! That is what I thought when I first read about the idea.

“Yes, you can. You are as powerful as the ocean, if you chose the right cause,” I imagined a spiritual guru writing this in his next New Age book. “Suppose you want all people in your neighborhood to become friends, or friendly to each other. What do you do?”

“Yah, you can organize a big sports event, a dancing party, a barbecue cookout, a religious gathering, or all of the above. And everyone gets to know each other, and be friendly ever after.”

“But this does not always work. For one thing, you can’t have these events very often. For another, you can’t expect to put people together for one day and they become fast friends. It takes time to get to know a person, especially in a community where people come from different countries, barely speak the same language, with divers religious believes, or not religious at all.”

“Here is another alternative – try to be friendly to one person a day, and do it everyday.”

“Forget who you are – White, Black, Yellow, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or your parents are communists and you didn’t know what religion was when you grew up. You are a human being, and you want your neighborhood to be friendly, safe, good for raising your kids, or for raising the value of your property. So just try to be friendly to one person a day. It only takes 1 second to smile at your neighbor, and 2 seconds to say ‘Hi, How are you today?’ Or maybe a couple of minutes to shake hands with a new neighbor and say ‘Welcome to the neighborhood. Let me know if I can help with anything.’ ”

“You know what will happen? First they will think you are a good person. Then they will forget about you if they don’t see you. This is not all that bad. They will become friendly to other people, because your kindness made them feel good, and they want to feel it often. Since they don’t see you that much, they will create the good feeling themselves by being friendly to other neighbors. And pretty soon, you find your neighbors are more friendly to you than ever before. And when a new neighbor moves in, he would think it is NORMAL to be friendly here, and he would copy the behavior.”

“And if one of your neighbors moves to another city? He will be friendly to his neighbor, because it is his HABIT to be friendly to his neighbors, a habit you started long time ago in your neighborhood!”

“This is how you can change the world by changing yourself,” the guru concluded.

Of course this just a theory from my imagination. I tried it in my neighborhood and it seems to have worked – except the part that neighbors moved out and transformed other neighborhood. I’ll take a faith value on that.