Waiting on the World to Change

Change is and always will be a challenging, beautiful, necessary thing, but I believe that too often in this world, we focus on the wrong kind of change. We become so intent on changing the people around us, rather than changing their lives. Does that make sense? Now, I am not one of those people who believes that right and wrong are relative, that what's right for you may not be right for me, but essentially, we're both right. No. I don't buy that for a second. Yet, in the same breath, I must say that believing that someone is doing something wrong and attempting to change someone because they're doing something wrong are two vastly different things. You cannot and should not even try to compare them, to justify your attempt to change someone with some irrelevant discord about how you disagree with something they have done or are doing. It's not the same; it never will be.

We are so bent on changing people, it's as though we're hard pressed to find any other pastime. We are so fixed on judging people, it's as though we've never paused to peruse our own filthy lives. And soon, this mentality leads to trouble. Loving others becomes some sort of good deed, some sort of charity case, even a chore, rather than something that should be second nature, something that we should feel empty WITHOUT, something that should heighten and deepen and transform and envelop every last bit of our lives. We've lost it. Because all the energy that was once available for love has been directed toward a hollow attempt to change that person we're supposedly loving. And you know what else? I think we are so proud of ourselves for being able to love people despite their flaws that we forget what it means to love people because of their flaws. We forget that past mistakes - and even current ones - don't define people. We forget that these mistakes are just as in need of love as the people themselves. We forget that change has more than one implication.

For change truly is challenging and beautiful and necessary. If we stop trying to do it. If we let the way we live and love and touch and listen and care and invest be the only change we wish to make. If we seek to change lives, rather than people. If we yearn to let those around us know that they are precious, not despite who they've been, but because of it. If we mess with their hearts, not with their choices. Change is good; yes. When it happens inevitably.