If you're reading this you might be right on time

One step to change everything

I have often said that in life we only go as far as we can see. And in a recent post I have talked about how perception often guides us more than our will to choose. To put it simply, we act on what feels possible, and we will only step through doors we can see.

“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t — you’re right.”

-Henry Ford

There have been studies done around children who grow up in poverty (even if only for a time) showing that many of them will struggle financially their whole life. In animal studies, a dog who believes they can do nothing about pain will simply lie down and take it. Psychologists call this phenomena ‘Learned Helplessness.’ My therapist has described it as an emotional homeostasis, like an internal thermostat that gets set in our youth or slowly over time and rarely if ever changes over the course of our lives.

“The more often he feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”

-CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

And if you are reading this, it might be too late. You might be a feeling machine like me, overwhelmed at the vastness of the world and all the immensity of its troubles. You might be exhausted by the firehose of information, violence, and pain gushing from our digital screens. You might simply be fed up with the weight of your own life. If you are reading this, you might be like that dog mentioned in the study above who has decided to lie down because what else is there to do?

Personally I reach for fairytales.

“Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”

-CS Lewis

Even the renowned psychologist Carl Jung believed fairytales to be great storehouses of humanities truth. You read them or you read them to your children and something in you just feels the goodness to be true.

“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

In these stories, we witness great acts of bravery done against incredible odds, we watch people choose to do what is right over what is popular or safe and something in our bones sings in resonance. We watch people act, as if what they do with their lives and their time matters and we see the miracle of how far that can go.

I don’t know if I have a lot to say today. But I do know that we will never know the extent to which our life, and the world at large, can change for the better unless we act like it can. We must allow for that possibility. We must give our eyes the chance to see open windows, bridges, and doors where we once only saw walls.

And then, we must decide to act.

However small, we must become the type of humans who are well practiced in bringing forth the goodness we all carry. Take a step. And dare to act like your decisions matter. Because they do.

“Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it.”

-Ghandi

Stay tender and stay true lovebugs,

Dakota