answering the question "What are you
committed
to?"
"This is the true joy of life: being used for a purpose recognized by
yourself as a mighty one and being a
force of nature
instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances,
complaining that
the world
will not devote itself to making you happy."
... George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, read out loud by
That's the question which came up recently in a
conversation
with a good friend of
Werner's
(who also happens to be a good friend of mine). It's one of the
questions to which I know I have an answer (or answers)
and yet ironically I've never pointedly asked it of myself, so I don't
even know my own actual answer(s) to it. And it's worth noting and
confronting that you don't know something by knowing it. No,
really you don't. No kidding. You really know something when you can
say, express, articulate, speak etc out loud that which you know, in a
way that's getable to others - so I assert authentic knowing
lives in language
(that's what piqued my interest).
He didn't articulate it as the more colloquial "What's your
commitmenttothe world?".
What he asked was "What's your
commitmentforthe world?".
OK. Language / words are absolutely critical to bringing forth
transformation. Even without having (yet) discovered any answers for
myself, it was abundantly clear to me that "What's your
commitment
for
the world?"
is an entirely different order of question than "What's your
commitment
to
the world?"
(to try both on for size, ask each of them of yourself, then listen
where each of them comes from and where each of them lands). When "to"
is replaced with "for", it's not the same question - not even remotely.
So I began investigating "What's your
commitment
for
the world?"
for myself and my life, given that's the way he asked it (and on
another occasion I may also investigate "What's your
commitment
to
the world?"
- but not now). I discovered I have more than one answer. Or maybe it
is only one answer but in multiple guises.
Our
political persuations,
religions, practices,
traditions, and rituals,
are not who we really are as human beings. We're
destroying the planet and literally killing each other (and if we're
not killing each other, then we're making life miserable and in many
cases unbearable for each other) over that which we aren't. My
commitment
for
the world
is we've had a massive, global
breakthrough
in transformation. We've realized how much our
pre-breakthrough
actions have cost us, a scenario in which no one won (not even the
victors) - to the contrary, in that scenario we were all losers. We've
realized that
"a world
that works for everyone" is no longer merely a smart idea: in fact it's
a fundamental axiom on which the very survival of the human race and
Earth as a planet that's inhabitable for us humans, and sustains us,
depends.
We've learned to identify with
our minds
to the degree that for all intents and purposes, we've become little
more than a species of
minds
breeding ever more
minds,
while only cursorily questioning who we really are in the
matter of our own being. Consider this: any action taken by any human
being (that means you and I and everyone) while failing to comprehend
whether the source of the action is
the mind
or their being, can only be inauthentic. Really. We've become
not merely a species of
minds
breeding ever more
minds:
we've become an inauthentic species of
minds
breeding ever more
minds.
My commitment
for
the world
is we realized how much this has cost us. We finally realized being
this way never made any difference (not ever), and we're
committed
to seizing the opportunity to be who we really are.
Listen:
would you rather be just another
mind
with just another feverish, selfish agenda, or would you rather be who
you really are? (hint: that's not a trick question). You decide which
works best for you and for your life in
the world
- and more so, for
the world
itself at large and for all its denizens. My
commitment
for
the world
is that we got to the point where the answer to this
essential question
became a no-brainer, the resulting impact of which is we're inspired to
honor
it, acting globally.