on ambition: part 2 : the answer: "reach of arm."

to say: "i want to change the world" is a wide and silly concept without the benefit of context. in this season of obama-love the idea of change can become the pseudo-quest for self-importance ( we are important intrinsically but not merely for ourselves). it is easy to set the task of saving the world in general and connect it to innate feelings of misapplied greatness. but life is not the united nations and the people who have had the most impact in shaping global right thinking have always sprung out of ethical-political campaigns situated in a local context. think: martin luther king and race relations in america or gandhi and indian independence or nelson mandela and the end of aparthied in south africa. saving the world begins, and may end, in the context of your own local setting.
your very own patch of the earth. true greatness is not manufactured it is merely lived up to. a thousand books on becoming will not change the silent call of your own heart, telling you to do that particular task and become a little more like yourself.

when i say i want to change the world i must begin with my own patch of earth. i do not know if the words i say or the acts i perform will have any effect on the street child in mumbai or the tortured woman in kabul. i know the troubles within my own family. i know when my friends are hurting. these are within the reach of my arm. this is where i begin to change the world one person at a time. the way i will deal with six billion is an extension of the way i have dealt with one. in our generation, private acts must match public conduct. i should not be uncaring to the people i spend most of my time with and speak love to the general peoples of the world. i should not seek to escape facing the real questions of my own corruption by subsuming them into a quest to end,say, economic corruption. i am more concerned today with living and loving within the reach of my own arm.

of course my arm will extend. there is a wife around the corner and children to be born, books to write, business, activism...my horizons will continually expand. and i will grow into all of it. i am in no hurry. i am not trying to meet up with some landmark set before me. the land that is my life is virgin territory. i walk alone, competing with no one. the reach of my arm is my own patch of earth.

so, for this weekend, this is how i intend to change the world: i am going home early today- to hang out with my sisters and sit with my mother(she has been a bit under the weather lately). i am going to call friends and brothers and just talk breeze. i am going to call the woman i am chasing and try to make her laugh. for somewhere between my lack of a funny bone, anywhere and her idea of laughter only in reaction to sarcasm we have not done that enough. tommorow i am going to the house of my brother to observe capentry and eat free food. on sunday me, that woman, my brother and his woman are going to see the nigeria-kenya game. we are going to sit in the stadium and scream for the great green white green. between screams i will be sipping on my first bottle of beer ever. the reach of my arm.

and everday i will wake up to find it again: the awareness that if i live the best life i know how, if i allow grace in, as an ocean, and let it carry me on its heady wave to island after island in need of a light houses for the soul- from shore to shore, person to person, living, breathing, becoming forri, then i will be changing the world.