Is there a grander view of life to have? Can we have a completely different vision of how the world can live peacefully? Can we have a model whereby every other country cooperates with everyone else?
There’s an old saying, ‘If you want to be successful, help others to be successful’ – this view is profoundly different from the values and ideals that have emerged in our modern world through the current policies of the great Western powers.
Are we suffering from the smallness of our collective imagination, if we are trying to understand our depression and anxiety then we must, at the same time, be gazing towards our highest hopes so as not to lose our own identity.
Our ideas of individualism and personal power oppose the clarity of the collective and therefore, we are being led astray. Humans are social animals, and if one individual or a nation wants to impose its values on another to govern, our compassion for each other will slide into the abyss.
Do we need the courage to find the hero within us, almost certainly, and especially when our hard-won freedoms and a lifetime of sacrifices are so easily cast aside as something insignificant by the powerful, the hero cannot help but notice that the choices we’re being offered no longer have any appeal.
Is it so hard to let others choose their own traditions, their own values, their own government or their way of living, surely this is a way for all of us to win. Without steadiness, without any fairness, without equity in life’s bounty, we can only ever be moving towards war.
We have to consider what kind of a future we all want. A completely different vision of this world needs to emerge. A way forward that offers less confusion and more inclusion. We still need heroes but not the Hollywood types that we are made to believe can save the world single-handedly, surely it’s the average person who can use their inner strength to see how cynical a friend has become and notice how helpless they really are and then, to have the bravery, to reach out with a helping hand.
Heroes need time, we all need time to get back on our feet, but when our hard work is dishonoured and promises not kept, we gradually realise they wish to break us. To break it all down and rebuild in their own image. This is not the hero’s journey but simply the darkness emerging.
