Before the light is gone

[michaelboy]

At the end of days, will conflict embraced add to your life or will it have been an unending frustration where you ultimately discover that through it you couldn't much control or change anyone else?

I know everyone (including myself) has much to learn about harmony:

"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world."

~ Unknown, circa 1000 a.d.


I suppose it is a lesson that I might positively influence others in a small way, but likely only by a demonstration of my life rather than by some invention and assertion of unending harsh criticisms. It really makes me feel so small knowing this, yet in the lasting of lasting things it feels proper.

Afterall:

In the end, everyone will wait here, in the time before, if not for themselves, then for those they love where the dance of life escheats its anticipation into the spiral of demise that is part of life itself.
Those months, weeks and days when a frail life can rage no longer against the light but before the light is gone and faded into its own waning glow through which only love and memory survive.

Comments

[howsmyenglish]

It's funny how humanity keeps repeating the same things over and over, and yet the world does not really change. There's
"Be the change you want to see in the world"
and also
"Please leave the washroom in the state you want to find it in",
and yet we are selfish and irritable, and we don't clean public washrooms.

[michaelboy]

It can be a hard lesson to learn, for sure!

[keplers_angels]

Yes I think.... example is really the point. But. Not even example. A turning away from wanting others to change and a turning toward seeking to soothe and support the self --- I think that ultimately, paradoxically, it's those people--- who want more to learn and to help than they do to fix or to impose upon, who end up actually influencing others the most.

[michaelboy]

Yes! Service to others (helping) is key, especially as it can significantly change the brain and its chemistry in a very positive way on either side of the equation