171. You Have To Change

The world is telling you that you have to change. It tells you in a multitude of ways. It tells you through the suffering you experience. It tells you through the consequences of your actions. It tells you through the words spoken by others. Change, they say, change to become more like us and everything will be better for you.

The world is not wrong about this. The more stubborn you are, the more pain it will dish out. If you do not pay attention to its signals, the world cannot treat you well. Sensing this, you feel compelled to conform, to abandon those parts of yourself that do not seem to fit. You want to optimize yourself for the world and its ways in order to minimize the pain you feel.

But this is a misunderstanding of your relationship with the world. For you do not exist merely to be what the world already is. You are alive and like all living beings you are an agent of change. You must sometimes impose yourself on the world in order to make the world better. The self that acts from compassion subtracts suffering from the world and adds joy in its place. The work of compassion sometimes also creates pain, but that is no reason to avoid it.

To fall in line with the world, to conform to its every facet, is to abandon the self completely. It is to abandon all that makes you a valuable and creative force for compassion. Do not grant the world power over you that it does not possess. While the world appears physically larger, it is not more powerful than the self. For the world and the self are actually the same thing, while also being separate. To see this is to understand the reality of your relationship with the world.

It is true that you will have to change, but it is because the world must change too. You change by becoming more aware of the self and the world, and by doing so, you begin to improve both through the creative effort of compassion.