If You Want To Make The World A Better Place

If you want to make the world a better place start with yourself, your own family, and your own home.

Most of us want - more than anything - a peaceful world. Peaceful people come from peaceful homes and families. For now, achieving world peace may seem like an impossible task; but it is easy to achieve a peaceful home, even without expecting everyone to agree all the time. There are civil ways to disagree. There are peaceful, compassionate, ways to teach right from wrong and even to punish wrong.

Aggressive acts come in all sizes. The numbers of people who will commit dramatic and huge acts of aggression aren't always that high. Sometimes it's the all-too-common smaller acts of individual aggression We may not be able to stop some of the insane, large, acts of aggression in this world; but the thousands and thousands of people who act aggressively on highways, in schoolyards, and in stores/shops (whether that's in the US or elsewhere) make the world that much worse. Not that I condone large acts of violence and aggression, but sometimes those committing them at least believe they have an excuse or cause. There is no excuse for the small, meaningless, acts of aggression in our day-to-day lives.

The world would also be a better place without so much media coverage of "celebutantes".

Most of us want a world where people respect one another, animals, and the Earth. Here again, this type of respect is easy to nurture in one's own home. Knowing what the term, "respect" (for ourselves, others, and the world) means; and setting a standard of behavior in our homes would lead to so many more people of this world being so much better people.

If we want to make the world a better place we need to get rid of reality television, backwards baseball caps, and all orange vegetables (except for carrots).

The world would be a better place if more people could be better educated. It is actually fairly easy to cultivate education within our families, but the challenge here is sending children from even the most nurturing environments into schools that so desperately need improvement. Still, there are enough families in which education is not a priority, so even if those families changed their ways the world would be that much better for it.

Too many people are willing to helplessly accept the way things are or the way things have always been done. Life is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and things that are right are like the right pieces of that puzzle. Things that are wrong are like the wrong pieces of the puzzle. Too many people try to work with those "wrong pieces", but everyone knows that the "picture" will never be correct without all the correct pieces. Making the world a better place would involve each and every person's decision not to just accept what is wrong. Trying to work with the wrong "puzzle pieces" means either leaving emptiness in the "puzzle" or jamming them into the space and causing the whole puzzle to become misshapen. There's a very popular saying, "When life gives you lemons make lemonade." If you want to change the world you don't just "make lemonade" - you throw the lemons back and say, "I don't accept these. Send me something better!"

The world would be a better place if governments could be better governments.

The world would be a better place if all children were born to solid, mature, stable, parents who wanted them. The world would be a better place if only people of high integrity ran it. The world would be a better place if the court systems were about justice - and not just winning at all costs.

The world would be a better place if customer service people were given the power, or a supervisor who had the power, to solve problems and not just say, "Unfortunately, there isn't any way we can fix that - but we value you as a customer." The commonly bemoaned customer service situation is a result of too many people "making lemonade". It is also sometimes the result of too many heads of companies (and their subordinates) not, apparently, having come from homes where standards of behavior, respect, and excellence were important.

If you want to make the world a better place, it is with resignation and regret that I remind you there is nothing much we can do about hurricanes, earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, and other natural disasters (although some changes in the way we sometimes populate high-risk areas could be made). With regard to most of the other things I mentioned, though, those are all things that can be changed if you start with yourself, your own family, and your home (oh - and yes - your own car and shopping cart).

Finally, never mind about the orange vegetables. After thinking more about them I realize that some people actually like them. When all is said and done, I suppose things like orange vegetables are the least of this world's problems.