The other day when I sat in one of my meetings, I heard the person next to me speaking about hope. Thinking about it as I write, it was like I was sitting so close to the idea of hope that I could practically touch it. I can still feel the impact of those words on me, tho I didn’t think much about it at the time.
This person’s words touched me in a place I hadn’t realized, just as some of words Barack Obama’s touched me last week, just as Nelson Mandela’s or Martin Luther King’s or Maya Angelou’s words have touched me at different times in the past. These words have stayed with me and resonated in me and worked in me when I wasn’t even aware of it.
They have lifted my spirits, and some days that is no small feat.
Then the other morning I heard that a characteristic of this Confluence Age that we are in is that everything is becoming new. That brought me a sense of hope and lightness, a hope and lightness that I also experienced when reading, of all things, Fast Company magazine. Because in Fast Company I read about some of the many bright, creative people out there who care about our planet and the people on it. These people are using their skills and talents to solve problems and bring us new capabilities that make life better, more sane.
These are not perfect people. Not one of them. Neither are the people I sit in meetings with. Neither are any of us on the planet. Some say that’s what it is to be human – to be perfectly imperfect.
And we are all part of the change, or can be if we want to be.
I mention this because I know I went through a time when I was angry at and avoided other people because it seemed that their imperfections had wounded me, and continued to do so. Maybe you’ve been tempted to do this? Get fed up with other people, withdraw and say, in essence, “screw you”?
I know I got awfully lonely, and couldn’t find anything worth filling my life with to replace the people I was avoiding, and believe me I looked – all over the world I looked. I kept finding I needed people. And I was feeling more and more hopeless.
Then I started looking at my own imperfections, with compassion. Not easy to do, and it took some time. But that allowed me to have the courage to stop hiding and let people see who I am really, because I didn’t have to be perfect any more.
Then I started to go back into my meetings and my communities with a change in me, with a belief that there is something greater than me, greater than the individuals and personalities around me. And with a belief that none of us has to be perfect, we just have to bring our uniqueness along with us, compassionately, to contribute to that greater whole.
That way, I don’t have to be anxious about other strong personalities or what other people think or what’s going to happen. All I have to do is be me, and bring what I have experienced, what I see and feel to the meeting or to my community.
And this, too, brings me hope. Because that’s all any of us has to do – in fact, all any of us can do. And wonderful things, like those things in Fast Company, can come out of it.
Pretty cool, huh?!