Changing the World

I do believe that writing has the power to change the world. I do believe that a simple idea can bring about radical change, and that the way you express that idea is the key to success. We as humans are transitory, we are born and die every single day, but the words and ideas that we leave behind will outlive us by centuries. Words have both the power to incite a revolution and to end one, but most of all, I believe that words have the power to unite us to a common purpose and a common decency.

If I were to share one idea with the world, it would be that society has its priorities all wrong and that this needs to be changed. We value money and things over mankind and human connections; we’d rather have a dollar in our pocket than a smile from a friend. And in this prioritization we will find our downfall. We will kill in the name of money and power without blinking an eye — without considering that the people we are killing are just trying to live, as we are. We forget that we are all connected, that experiences and compassion matter more than wealth and abundance. I grew up in an environment where possessions mattered more than our ties to our family and friends; I have experienced rejection because of things that shouldn’t even matter. And from experience I can say that this is wrong, that this is corrupt, and that indeed things are meaningless.

I have felt the power of connection, the thread that ties us all together and makes us all one. I have found a state of peace where I can forget the outside world and its atrocities in a moment of a gratification so profound that nothing can match it — all through human connection. The inverse will likely never be true for me: I will never forget myself in riches; I will never lose myself in power. Those things cannot make me feel complete. One of the best moments of my life was when, after sleeping just an hour the night before, one of my best friends and I hiked for 10 hours straight and at the end of the day, all we could say was this: “I feel alive.” No money could have bought that moment. Nothing could have replicated its simple beauty and perfection.

This idea is an important one, and one that needs to be more widely understood by the masses. People, not power. Experiences, not wealth. However, it is also one that cannot be transmitted easily because the belief in our society that wealth and possessions are everything is so deeply rooted that it would take a lot of effort to change. These ideas are not easily communicated through a newspaper article with lackluster language and a straightforward approach. It is more easily communicated through analogies, experiences, and memories.

It would be nearly impossible to sum up this idea in a single work. It would have to be transmitted through a variety of works, and possibly through a variety of different methods so that it is easily absorbed by a variety of different cultures. To accept this idea almost certainly also requires an inherent sense on the reader’s part that something is wrong. As such, avenues where specialized groups of people are exposed to writing would be acceptable: books, poetry, and blog posts among others. It would require a great amount of wordsmithing to express the beauty in human connections, but it is an important duty as human beings for us to understand this. And if we do, we can all feel complete — we can all feel alive.