Acrylic Paint and Tap Dance Markings on Wood
36″x36″
Essay Excerpt
One simple way of approaching the idea of change is through two perspectives. Some people want something to start happening – for peace to prevail or for kindness to permeate relationships, for example. While others want something to stop happening – perhaps ending poverty or stopping violence. However, anyone who has tried, can attest to the fact that starting something new or stopping something old is quite challenging for individuals and institutions. Indeed, there are entire industries built upon helping people and organizations change. My goal here is not to minimize or overstate the challenge of change, but to offer ways of thinking about it.
We are living in a sea of consequences.
A broad way of looking at the world’s current situation is as a function of the accumulated thoughts and feelings, and consequential actions of the collective humanity over all time. Individually, one’s “world” can be described as the scope of their effective will. As such, each person’s perspective of the world’s current situation may vary. However, we can still try on this idea and see if it fits. That is that the impact of many small actions, made in the context of relationships, has accumulated over time, has been adopted as norms in cultures, and sometimes solidified into law, and has landed us here–the dire situation and greater wonder that is humanity. At the same time, there are, as there have always been, competing views for what is real, what it means to be a good person, to be well off, and how one achieves either. Thoughts based on these ideas and our underlying desires lead to actions, and actions have consequences. We are living in the sea of consequences.