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How Can I Make a Difference in the World?
In the face of fear, hate, and anger… be love
I wrote the article that follows on 11/11/20, but I did not publish it.
Why?
I felt it wasn’t ready — I felt I wasn’t ready. Now, two months later, I see that this is the right time, that this is the moment in which I am called to do something big, something bigger than I believe myself capable of doing. But I am going to do it anyway because if I want others to rise beyond their comfort zones, I must do so myself.
I am afraid of what our country has just shown us. I am afraid of the magnitude of hate I saw on January 6th, of what it represents, of the next thing it will manifest. It’s not as if this hate is new, but in recent years it has been stoked and glorified, justified, and honored. This hate is born of fear — fear of “otherness,” of the unknown, of the misunderstood, and the imagined consequences of NOT hating and NOT acting on that hate.
But nothing good comes of hate, and if humanity is to survive, the fear driving the hate must be replaced with compassion for those we do not know or understand. The great leaders of our time Gandhi, King, the Dalai Lama, Mandela, Mother Teresa showed love in the face of adversity, honor amid pain, integrity, as they withstood the worst hate could bestow…
