We are at an age where everything – and absolutely anything is possible, if you have enough faith and a healthy dose of nerve and guts. We are young and free. We are privileged and we are lucky. Almost anything we need, we could get with just one touch of a button, or one swipe of a finger. We are capable of doing what our predecessors would consider as "miraculous". We have reached that era –of progress and convenience.
Let us look around us. Let us look at our cities, and our community. Do you see the potential? Do you see hope? Do you think you can make a change, or help improve, at the very least? We think, we say, we act, and we grow. There are multitudes of ways we can make a change, each one of us in the best way we can.
If you speak well, and have that innate ability to make people listen, proclaim your cause! Tell people you know what you know. Tell them what you think. Tell them to see difference in the world around you. Tell them what they might have overlooked. But remember not to force your beliefs and points by shoving it in their faces. Remember to choose your words wisely. And remember to speak the truth. We may be young, and there may be more we have to know and learn, but what we think counts. Every drop of idea, every whisper of theory, every cloud of thought our minds conceive, are all important. Perhaps there may be things we have to share that those of wiser years might have overlooked, or forgotten.
If you write well, and have a way with words, relish them with your thoughts. There are a lot of ways you can express your opinions, beliefs and causes. Write a poem, post a blog, publish an article, or even write a book. You have the ability to awaken the soul, stimulate emotions, toughen spirits, and stir curiosity. Yes, you have this power. Use it to your advantage!
If you perform well on stage or even merely in front of an intimate crowd, and have a rare talent of enchanting and entrancing the senses, entertain them with your convictions. You have the power to make a tear drop, a heart smile and a hair stand on its end. Perhaps your performance could be the most powerful of ways, if only those who watch also see.
So what will we speak, write and perform about exactly? What is your cause? Not what interests you, but what stimulates you the most – what makes your heart race, your emotions flare. What do you think should be done but is abandoned? What do you think should be appreciated but neglected? What do you think should be considered but overlooked?
Points of view, opinions, beliefs and causes: What is your stand? What is your cause? Surely, you do not want to be the one to always say, “No comment.” Get involved. You cannot always choose to ignore. You cannot achieve gratification in arrogance, and ignorance. We have a power to effect change. We do not need to be on the seat of power to proclaim our beliefs, to be greeted only with jeers and shouts of a crowd that may or may not listen. For in most occasions, they only reach down and look down on these crowds and silently indulge in their own selfish triumphs. We, on the other hand, can most definitely reach out to those in front, at the back, beside us, and alongside us. We could accept challenges and meet those who approve and disapprove of our beliefs. There may even be those you might get angry or upset. But feedbacks mean that you are being heard – and your thoughts have made a difference. And with this, we create a cycle – of thought and action. And this is how we grow.
With this, let us learn a remarkable two cents (or even more than that) from my favorite author:
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
- J. K. Rowling, excerpt from 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination' speech, Harvard University, June 2008
by Alane Joy Elevado
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