DAY 78 – A BETTER LIFE AND BETTER WORLD WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY HAPPEN, WE HAVE TO CREATE IT

I just got home after going to the supermarket to buy dinner for my family. My five year old son had told me in the store he was getting hungry. I told him that it would be a little while until we get home and I would then cook his food for him. When we got home he started to act up because he thought the food should be ready right away. He did not understand that his dinner would not automatically be ready when he wanted it to be.

Life is similar to the impatience of a child who wants something right at that moment even if it is unreasonable to immediately expect it to happen. Human beings want a better life right at that moment. We want to live in a better world right at that moment. When something goes amiss or is downright cruel we wonder why it couldn’t be different. Seldom does a person look at oneself or others and say that thinking the same way and acting in a manner like I always have will not bring about the change in my own life and in the world that I would like to see happen.

The world that we live in today is so different from the world of a century ago. We can see the ingenuity that is required to figure out how to solve a task or invent a product that has helped humanity transcend what had existed up until that point in time. It may have taken many tries and many years to invent something new but the effort is worth every minute of the toil because it has made everyday living easier and better. Elevating our world onto another plane where humanity as a whole can achieve the nine basic requirements for a better life and better world requires an ingenuity and effort that can bring it about.

Inventing a product requires a dedication to seeing it through its trials and tribulations. There will be disappointments that it has taken longer to get to where a person or group set out to go. There will be peaks and valleys until the final product is achieved. Those who create something new often have to spend time seeing it through the failures until success is achieved. Every life changing invention requires the determination to not give up.

To have a personally better life and to live in a collectively better world requires even more determination and effort than inventing a product. We have to deal with one another as separate individuals with different ideas and beliefs. We have to deal with one another as members of different nationalities, religions, races, ethnicities and sexual orientations who have different histories, ideologies, beliefs and ways of living life based upon which group they are part of. Living in harmony with one another often is a difficult task.

Except for its complexity, getting to where we want to go as a species requires time and effort that is no different than the time and effort required to prepare a meal or inventing a useful product. We have to put our minds to the task of not having problems, whether those difficulties are one’s own, those of the people we care about the most, our neighbors or any human being living on the other side of the planet.

Human beings have a connection to one another that goes beyond just saying we are human. That connection is who we are and lies deep within. The desire for a better personal life and a collectively better world drives us to do the good deeds that we do even if some of those kind acts has nothing to do with one’s own life. This human connection is the driving force to creating a better world.

I now realize that every single invention, every single good deed and every single human desire has never been as simple as thinking about it and somehow it then magically appears. A better life for myself, my loved ones and every other human being will not automatically happen, we have to create it.