Male vs Female?

A friend of mine shared this on Facebook, and after I read it, I just had to say something. This is something that has been brewing for a long while, and after certain recent events, I'm starting to see that it's not just me that feels this way. Our society needs to be taught to think correctly. And sometimes I have days where I can't see how we can change these things - I feel like we need to wipe the slate and start afresh with a whole new community. And other days, I feel like all we need is a push. All we need is enough voices trying to change the way we think. These changes are slowly happening, like the sun peeking over the horizon. All we need to do now is keep pushing, keep the movement going, and maybe one day, we can live in a society where we are all equals, regardless of gender or race or earnings.

It's a nice thought, and one I'm sure I will return to again. Anyway, here is my response to the above picture:

"We raise boys to be strong and protective. We teach them that being vulnerable is only for girls, that they have to be emotionless otherwise they're not a man. We tell them they have to be successful. They have to be the bread-winner, they have to be better than the girls, otherwise they are less.

We teach men shame - close your mouth if you have something bothering you, just suffer in silence. We teach them that they are a danger to girls, that they are the enemy. We make them feel as though by being born male they are committing a crime. And so boys grow up into men who cannot allow themselves to be human, to make mistakes. They grow up to be men who silence themselves. They grow up to be men who cannot say what they truly feel. And they grow up - and this is the worst thing we do to our children - girls and boys alike - they grow up to be adults who turn pretence into an art form.

We have founded our society on this - it abounds in our advertising, in our jobs, in our government, in our schools and in our homes. We are teaching ourselves again and again that we are different - when we are not. Male or female, every person should have the chance to choose for themselves who they want to be."

The Choice... Between Good & Evil

We make a lot of choices and decisions every day. Whether to get up and go to work, what clothes we are going to wear to work, what we’re going to have for breakfast, etc etc. But how many times do we wake up and say “I’m going to be ‘Good’ today.” Or even “Today feels like a day to be ‘Bad’.” What do you think when you walk past a homeless person on the street. Would you ignore them and walk on?

Watching Anakin grow up in the Star Wars movies, I realised that it was a choice that we need to make every day. And the trouble is, it is so much easier to be bad. Doing ‘Good’ is really hard work. Actively doing ‘Bad’ is pretty hard work too, but when we take the easy way out and refuse to make a decision, we are effectively casting our vote towards the bad. Our indifference is enough to tip the scales. Martin Luther King said – “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Albert Einstein also commented on this – “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

That’s not to say that I think we should all be out there protesting in the rain, trying to end poverty – although I still think it’s a good cause – but I am interested in trying to shift the alignment back towards good. It’s a hard issue to tackle for most people, because 1. There are so many differing definitions of Good and Bad, and 2. It’s too much effort.

All I can say is that my goal (as of a few days ago) is to make the choice for Good a part of my morning routine. It will be a slow start, but I am going to focus on projecting love and compassion and a sincere desire for positive change out into the world. I know how easy it is to say when I’m already in a good mood, and that the test will be when I am in a bad mood, but my aim is to eventually phase out the negative thinking that causes the bad moods.

I’ve had pretty good success so far, managing to calm myself completely before an interview, managing to keep little things that would normally ruin my mood from getting to me, and above all – managing to keep on top of my thinking when I start to circle in negative space. So here’s to keeping our thinking positive and actively choosing Good every day.