Becoming Monsters

I started re-reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller today. And there was a short portion where he spoke about something very…fundamental.

“I am the problem.”

I'm not what you would call a picketer or a social activists that you know....provides roadkill for tractors tearing down historical buildings. BUT like the best of them I can spew out altruistic and political comments that make me sound like I have convictions and I know where the problem lies. But really….do any of us?

Do we look in the mirror and explore

our habits,

our public speaking skill,

our ideas,

and our time management as scrupulously as we explore those in the spotlight?

Granted…most of us aren’t running for president or anything. But does that negate responsibility? If we spend more time judging the actions and movements of others than we do taking stock of our own motives and actions are we really politically or socially concerned or are we just selfish and ignorant?

“I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thing, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything... The problem is not out there; the problem is the need beast of a thing that lives in my chest”

Not to say that every problem that exists is our fault. That’s pretty ridiculous. But I’m just saying…we sure do spend a lot of time pointing fingers. We need not live in a mirrored house to see how many problems are caused but us as individuals that make up the collective.

We may scoff at the altruist motto “be the change” but well…maybe we don’t think about it often enough. That is after all the only control we have. I cannot control what others do, but I can control me (usually, unless I’m extra ornery).

I can control what I give that others come into contact with. And if I start paying attention to what I put out there….well maybe that’s the only way I can really affect what others do and propel change.

I think if we watch others do stupid things and point our fingers instead taking a cue

-we’ll find we’ve all become the monster we scoff at:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” Friedrich Nietzsche