Changing the World

Something many of thought of at one time or another. A delicious urge to bring peace to the world, end hunger, put a chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway.

I have entertained this egotistical fancy but then when I look at myself, I just laugh. I am screwed up. A fractured man trying to sort through the different demons that are biting at my ankles. Sometimes, I can barely pay my bills on time. And when it comes to any long term, intimate and sexual relation, forget it. What right do I have to think I know better that the ones around me if I can’t keep my own life straight?

In a previous post, I mentioned that when I started to write seriously, it was not because I hoped that subjects that I brought up would change people. I wanted to bring a different voice into the arena so people would stop and think about what I had to say.

I remember a trilogy I wrote of short stories focused on the suicide of a character named Sam Collins. The only character I have ever used myself as a template.

The first story, The Final Act, has his best friend, Myles finding Sam had committed suicide. This story afforded me the voice to speak about my first suicide attempt.

The second story, The Final Confirmation, focuses on Myles dealing with the grief of losing his friend. This story afforded me the voice to speak about the first time I had to deal with the death of someone I really cared about.

The final story, Riding the Storm, focuses on Sam and what crap built up to cause him to commit suicide. Thing is, the character was gay and it was the first time I started to express the pain and anguish of the closet without coming out of the closet, which I was in at the time. So this afforded me a way to express the pain I was going through at that time.

Yet the reactions shook me. Some of my close friends knew of my first suicide attempt, while others did not. The stories allowed me to open up and let them see something they had never seen before. Personal experience can be a powerful tool.

The gay aspect provided me the first steps of coming out. Many of my readers could not connect with the pain Sam was going through. And when I came out, they saw what I had written. It reverberated like a massive wave of thunder.

So what is the point of all of this you may ask. In time, these stories will be in print and hopefully generate some reaction and debate. But I was stunned by my small group what impact I had caused.

You can’t change the world. But as a single individual, you do have influence on those around you. And they had influence with those around them.

Thing is, it is nice to be that tsunami but that it not reality. Change is incremental and slow. But change does happen. I have seen it in my life time.

But the sad fact of reality is to affect change is not easy. As a lone person, you affect a few people about you. But to make the changes more effective, a group grows around you. And that is the death knell of change. The focus of any group becomes inward not outward. Personal agendas become more important that the original goals.

Yet it is frustrating to be the lone wolf out there, trying to point to problems and potential solutions. Nietzsche vividly expresses this in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Human beings are inherently impatient. They want immediate results. The idea that what influence you may have may not take root in your life time is not an option. You want to be able to see the change before your final breath.

So that is why all the schemes to change the world are doomed to failure. It is driven by ego. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I know that I have made my mark. There have been people in my life that have seen a different perspective or point. And that will carry on.

I will never see the changes I would like in the world. But when I look at my friend Brian’s daughter, Erin, I see what little I have passed on to her will continue to others. My legacy is not change today but change in the future. And it makes no difference whether it is big or small.