Welcome to the first Tip of the new five-part series, ‘How To Make Human Rights Less Harrowing’ where various crutches are explored to help anyone become a humanitarian, without being grieved by the current state of the world.
Human Rights is focusing on being the change you wish to see in the world. Human Rights is not studying tragic events and letting it eat away at you.
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Tip #1 Think of how you saw the world as a child
Adulting. Arrested Development. We weren’t always this way. We had big dreams as tiny people, but now we’re big people with tiny dreams?
Many feel that adulthood is a sham, a scam, and the worst sequel to childhood since… every Home Alone film after Home Alone 2. Responsibilities, loneliness, muffin top – yes adulthood is a cruel aftermath to youthful freedom. And on top of all that you’re supposed to course-correct the world by doing charity work where governments fail?
I suppose I’m not making a great case for how to make Human Rights less harrowing so far. But let’s revisit our childhood imagination for a moment. My case is that if you imagine the world through the eyes of your less-jaded self, you will see Human Rights as an opportunity to make that hopeful vision of the world come to fruition.
As children we would dream of growing up and having all kinds of jobs, no matter how unrealistic they were. I wanted to be a chef, an interior designer, and Picasso. Once at school, the son of a famous politician confessed to me he wanted to be a fire hydrant. Children are unreasonable beings, but that’s also why they’re bloody brilliant. If you’ve ever played MASH on an unfortunate bit of scrap paper holding your “fate” you will remember the careless imagination that armoured your miniature past-self. The world was your oyster, the globe was full of hopes and opportunities.
I can’t make Human Rights less harrowing entirely, but I can help. My hopes are if you want to participate but you have too delicate a disposition then this is a great tip for you to start with.
Equally, if you are not too sensitive-hearted but more reluctant to endeavour into Human Rights, you might want to take a trip down memory lane. You could find that while you were trading Pokémon cards on the playground all those years ago, you experienced an overlooked freedom that you could ensure is shared with children from war-torn countries.
Some of you may have heaped sand or mud into your mouth as a child, or been afraid of the bogeyman. But as nonsensical as we may have been, there was a purity in how we saw the world. Fire hydrant ambitions aside, we can still help make our world a little more pure.
Human Rights is: focusing on being the change you wish to see in the world.
Human Rights is not: studying tragic events and letting it eat away at you.
When most adults think about the world around them, instead of getting hyper and excited like a child about all the marvellous things, they direct their energy to the “bad” stuff: the poverty, the wars, the pollution. We all play a part, but we can’t help the world by stressing about it or taking full responsibility for all the world’s tragedies.
You may have to resist the urge to join thousands of other angry, disenchanted adults on Twitter or at protest rallies and focus on actions that will generate goodwill and prosperity for all.
Imagine for a moment, Earth covered in pristine forests, breath-taking coastlines, and rolling crystal blue oceans. Or see people all over the world partying to celebrate a whole year or maybe a decade of global peace and harmony and cooperation among all humankind. Or every single woman, girl, boy and man safe and warm in a comfortable home with plenty of food and all the money they need now and forever more. Picture people like yourself, happy and content, at peace and living in prosperity. Childish? Possibly. But the world could use a little child-like imagination when it comes to making human rights less harrowing.
As for the bad “stuff” you hear about going on around the world, like war or earthquakes or famine or worse, instead of getting in a funk about it – take a little time to think about and bring about well-being, peace, and abundance to those affected.
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking.
It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein
Read about the upcoming generation leading the way in activism, by Silvia Li Sam at XQ:
Posie Lombardi Rodriguez 