Let’s start. May I have your permission to dream with me? Dream way, way, way bigger than you maybe normally do? OK? Here is my question: What do you really want? I mean really. Yes, yes you can have a billion dollars – boom – now keep on going deeper. This is a dream after all so you can have anything. What do you want beyond just the superficial stuff? Maybe deep happiness for yourself? Yes, please hold on to that part of the dream, but try going even a little further. Maybe dream of happiness for others? Certainly you can dream of happiness for your loved ones, but how about living in a world of joy for all? Wait, you can imagine a billion dollars but not that? Stay with me here. Let’s try again. Stop and breathe. Settle down into your body. Notice where you are and everything you are feeling in this moment right now. And then ask yourself the question again, but this time from your heart. What is the biggest dream you can dream? How big can you open your heart? Notice if resistance comes up. That is very normal. Take a breath again and see what is going on. Is the resistance still there? Try to really get in touch with what this is about. Know this is our core work – it is going to guide us on what needs to happen. Just about all of us are working on expanding our hearts past this resistance. I don’t think we ever are done with this work. And we all can use teachers.
My first great teacher was my son. It happened in an unexpected way. After graduating from college I flew to Japan to teach English. My third week in Tokyo the Japanese woman I was seeing became pregnant with my child. She was fifteen years older than me, and we had been having a fling. No love between us at all really. She told me to go, she could handle this. But I had a waking vision – I never have waking visions – of an 18 year old stranger knocking on my door saying, “Dad?”. I had no idea of “what” needed to happen, but I was so very, very clear “not that”. And that turned out to be enough. We got married with the plan to divorce in a year just to make my son “legitimate” in Japanese law. But I fell in love with my son and could not leave. For the next couple of years I poured as much love into my time with my son as I could. Never taking for granted that this was going to last. And I was astonished to learn that the more love I poured in the more I had to give. The love kept on getting bigger and bigger. Fortunately I persuaded his mom four years later on to move to the U.S. and I got to stay with him. That relationship with his mom was fraught and incredibly painful, but that pain seems so small compared to the incredible gift of my son. And I learned so much. It was my first step into that bigger place of love.
When I try to really open up to this huge dream of a world of joy for all, there is something inside me that resists. I have a really hard time asking for this for myself. As if I am not worthy of something as grand as that. But for my children? I love my children with all my heart and want the world for them. And in fact I want the world for all children. Even if you don’t have children, hopefully you can feel that too. So for them? yes, with all my heart I can ask for a better world. I want an amazing, vibrant world for them. It is so hard to ask for this for myself, but so simple to ask for them. So maybe it really is that simple. Just let our love for our children guide us. What kind of world works best for raising children? Focus on that.
How do we create a vision of this bright beautiful new world? We don’t have to – it has already been done by many people. My favorite version is called Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Both a documentary and a movie about Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood came out recently. I strongly recommend watching both. They complement each other:
This is the essay that inspired the movie, I highly recommend it too. It is very powerful:
Fred Rogers told every child they are beautiful and perfect just the way they are. Great start! I want the whole world to be like that. I want a world where every child grows up without trauma, safe and secure in the knowledge that they are deeply loved and cherished. I want every child to have many adults that love them unconditionally and who they can turn to when they are confused or hurting. Every child encouraged to flourish and taught to recognize the majesty and beauty of this world. And just like in his show I want them to know that people can work through their differences in healthy, loving, productive ways. How can we settle for anything less than a world that is healthy for our children? I want a world that works in all ways for children. A world where our children thrive. To grow up in a culture of kindness and respect, not in a climate of fear and hurt.
Does this sound too naive and simple? Consider the alternative. Particularly in the U.S. Think of the shooting of little children at Sandy Hook or Uvalde elementary. If you are willing and able, please let yourself feel at least a little of the horror of all those dead little bodies with bullet holes bleeding on the ground. And it is completely OK if that is way too much to let it in even just a little – that is exactly my point. We have had countless mass shootings of children. And nothing has changed. So many children dead, so many parents grieving. And somehow we are OK with this. Children mercilessly separated from their parents at the border, and then somehow the government “lost” the parents. Those orphaned children will be scarred for life. And we are somehow OK with that too. Black parents having to explain to their sons how dangerous a world it is for them. As if those boys are not all of our sons. And with global climate change there is a very realistic possibility that billions of future children may die. Seriously. What species cares so little for its offspring? This is so not OK. Something has to change.
Wait you might be thinking. You keep on switching back between things like school shootings and climate change. Aren’t those very different things?
Whether you are working on climate change, racism, patriarchy, or gun control in the end we are all doing the same work – widening the circle of compassion to include all of us. Seriously, no kidding, all of us. And that includes the future generations that currently have no say in how we are treating the planet. They count too.
We need to widen our circle of compassion big enough to love everyone unconditionally. Learn to love people exactly as they are, and spend the time to truly understand them. This will require hard work, of course. Whole worlds will have to be opened up and immense struggle, effort and yes many tears will be necessary just to even get started. But in the end this is where we will have to end up. How can it be any other way? Unless and until we discover that we are all one and we solemnly commit to love, revere, and care for each other as we would for our very own the world does not heal.
Help me here. Does this not make sense? That all this work is ultimately the same? That caring about the Black man dying under the knee of a callous police officer is the exact same work as teaching them to care for future generations? Both stem from too tight a circle of compassion. It is all too human to treat others as not-quite-humans. The work to get people to bring more people and (species) into their heart is the same no matter which group you are trying to get them to expand to. First understand them and meet them where they are. Then help them out of the pain that is blocking their hearts, and then together open up to a crazy big dream of love.
We need to own this work. We cannot continue to pretend this is something the next generation will take care of.
Please watch this video:
Greta Thunberg is talking directly to me here. To my failures. To all the adults who have so badly failed her. It is not her job to save the world, but ours. How dare we push this on to future generations. How dare we not own up to our own very great failures and commit to doing better. She is speaking from a place of sacred, righteous anger. Although she shouldn’t have to be, she is showing up as my teacher. Teaching me how to be more effective in the world. This kind of anger is so necessary. It forces us out of complacency. It brings a precious gift – the fire and passion to meet our problems head on instead of running away.