On changing the world..

I’ve grappled with this term “Change the World” both internally, and externally, trying to understand what it really means, and whether we, in general, should be allowed to use it.

I have a friend who despises the phrase “save/change the world” because of the implication that the world, as a whole, can be saved or changed. To him, these phrases are inherently deceiving because it leads one to believe that the world can in fact be saved, that the powerful few who call the shots, will stop dead in their tracks and start building a world that will actually benefit everyone. In his view, this will never happen, and as a result, we are left with false hope that the world can be changed.

His argument made sense to me, and I had to think about it for a bit..

What I realized is that these ideas of “changing the world” exist because the world needs to see some sort of hope. These phrases were put out to us because there is a demand for it, both by the people who are suffering and those who aim to help. But who exactly is this world that we speak of? Who is the world that needs changing? Surely this world is just made up of individuals, billions of them, whose individual worlds need changing.

By looking at the world as billions of pieces that must be changed, it only makes sense that the only way we can work towards fulfilling this hope is by working on one individual at a time. And to me, this is where I find my peace. Knowing that there are billions of problems, which I will never really be able to impact, I can make peace with the fact that I can do my part to change just one individual’s life, and continue to encourage the “neutral” majority to play their part in changing the rest.