You Cannot Hope to Build a Better- Daily Meditation 2.7.24
Today’s Quotation:
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his or her own improvement, and at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.-Marie Curie
Today’s Meditation on Cannot Hope to Build a Better:
I have to improve myself. I don’t say that because I think I’m flawed or unworthy but because that’s all about life. Life is about growth and development, not stagnation. It’s about being more next year than I am this year because I’ve been open to learning from the many lessons that come my way each day.
This growth is not just for my benefit. In fact, it’s less for my benefit than for the benefit of those I touch with my life every day. I’m a good teacher now, but have you ever had one of those teachers who’s been doing everything exactly the same way for the last twenty years? These teachers don’t learn new methods or materials–they’ve found a comfort level that they like, and they’ve stayed there, stagnating just like water that stands in one place for too long. Water is meant to flow and mix constantly with new water, not to stand independently without new influence. But these teachers do just that, and what do we learn from them? In my experience, not much.
Of course, we’re obligated to improve ourselves only if we want to make this world a better place. If we don’t care about that, we can spend our lives entertained passively, learning nothing new. But then, we’re not fulfilling our responsibility of contributing to the world.
Read the book or watch the movie Tuesdays with Morrie when you can. Morrie knew that he was dying, but he also knew that he still had the chance to teach other people, to touch their lives in a positive way. And the people who knew him came away richer, and we know that the people in their lives, in turn, were enriched by their new growth. We can change the world, one small act at a time.
I think the only thing I would change about Marie Curie’s passage above would be to say that we have an “opportunity” to help rather than a duty because as we enrich others, we also enrich ourselves and our own lives. It’s all in how we look at it.
Questions to ponder on Cannot Hope to Build a Better:
1. What can you do today to improve the world, even if it’s on the smallest level possible?
2. How can you improve yourself today? Tomorrow? This year?
3. How many people are affected by your actions each day, on any level? Is the effect that you have on them positive and helpful?
For further thought:
Each person takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him or her. But a day comes when we begin to care that we do not cheat our neighbors. Then all goes well. We have changed our market cart into a chariot of the sun.- Ralph Waldo Emerson
