New skills for a new world

The system isn’t broken. The current system, as it’s designed, is working perfectly. It’s creating the outcomes that it’s designed to create. The climate crisis, social divides, epidemic levels of loneliness and depression are all logical outcomes of the current system.

For those of us who want different outcomes, and have been trying to create a world which supports the well-being of all environmentally, socially, and individually, the question is, why is the system so hard to change?

One reason is that part of this system is inside us. It was planted there by our upbringing and our education. The skills, facts, and world views we’ve been taught have equipped us to work within and maintain the current system, not to change it. By design, we haven’t been taught how to build a different system.

This is why the step before trying to create change out there, is creating change in ourselves. Inner change that comes from learning new skills of being, belonging, and becoming what we imagine the world could be. Inner change that comes from building capacity to be with the fear of staring into an unknown future and taking a step forward anyway. Inner change that comes from making a commitment to showing up every day to do what is ours to do, to build a future for the well-being of all.

This isn’t easy work, and it isn’t glamorous work, and for many of us, we may never see the fruits of tending to the seedlings of the future, but what is the alternative?

The alternative is that the current system keeps going as it is.