My Birthday Post

June 27th, 2007.
A friend wished me a Happy Birthday a bit ago. I am celebrating 61 years of Life here on planet Earth, a member of what has been called the ‘enlightened generation. For me it has indeed been a wonderful Life and I am very glad that I am still here and that my physical/mental condition is not worse than it is. I am thankful for having been alive in these wonderful times, though I have to be honest, I am not at all liking the future I see coming at us. While the technological future looks increasingly exciting, the future of much of our world does not look so good. Recently, we’ve seen news accounts of deformities and disappearances of frogs and other amphibians, disappearing honey bees and song birds. Ocean fish are dying. There seems to be an ever increasing amount of violence amongst the peoples of the world. Drought and famine appear to be increasing as well. I no longer watch scary movies, as the evening news is scary enough.
When I was growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City during the 1950' & ‘60's, we seldom locked the house doors and we left the keys in the car, unlocked. We were encouraged to be friendly to all others, including strangers. We didn’t have to walk around being afraid that someone might accost us, though we stayed out of the ‘bad part of town’.
Well, it’s a different world out there today. The ‘bad’ has invaded every part of town. So I am thankful that I have gotten to live when and where I have, and frankly, I feel somewhat sorry for the youth of today, though I have a feeling that they, too, will feel fortunate to have lived in their time while also feeling sorry for the young of their day. It appears that for much of Life, things are on a downward spiral.
Today I began my sixty-second year. Happy Birthday To Me...I am a part of the Great Baby Boom Generation that is now moving into the final act of human Life. One of the habits I formed many years ago is reading the Obituaries every day. I find it interesting and a great source of inspiration, reading about the lives of the departed ones, who they were and what they had accomplished as individuals here on Earth. The daily obituaries are peppered with my peers, most of whom may have missed out on this third act of Life.
'If,' as Leonard Pitts asks, 'Life's first act is about growing up, coming of age, learning the lessons that shape you, and the second is about acquiring things, getting ahead, building a career, shouldn’t the third be about something bigger than one’s own aspirations and comforts? Shouldn’t it be about doing something, leaving something, creating something that makes Life better for somebody else.' If I, as a member of the Enlightened Generation, am really going to be a part of doing something, or creating and leaving something that has the possibility of making Life better for others, then I had best begin to Change myself, for 'Change,' as Sheldon Stahl tells us, 'begins with one - the power of the individual. It’s not uncommon these days to be overcome with the notion that there is little we can do to alter the flow of the cosmos that sweeps us along in its current. This sense of powerlessness often results in a degree of passivity and paralysis that simply reinforces the notion that we really can’t Change anything, even if we should wish to do so. Yet history provides us with numerous examples of individuals who have made a profound difference. And we must know intuitively that there are among us even now individuals who by their actions are having an impact on our lives and the lives of generations yet unborn. A single drop of water may have no perceptible effect when it falls on stone. However, over time the result of innumerable drips on that stone will be to alter its form. That is to say, the power of one is most often imperceptible. But the power of many individuals united in their vison and in their actions is an altogether different situation. The nature of most societal Change is that it tends to proceed incrementally. Great changes are the exception, not the rule. They seldom emerge full blown, but are the result of a cumulative process over time. And at the root of all such transformation in our society, there must first be a Change in ourselves and in our thinking. Absent such a Change at the individual level, there can be no effective Change at the collective level. There resides in each of us the potential to initiate and to contribute to the process of Change, if we have the will to seize that potential and to act upon it. If we fail to participate in that process, or choose to stand aside, we run the risk of living rather barren lives. For as the futurist Alvin Toffler observed, 'Change is not merely necessary to live - it is Life.' To recognize this reality is to shun the excuse that our power of one, like the drop of water, is bereft of significance. Rather, in choosing action over inaction, we can make manifest the coda of Margaret Mead and join together as atomistic players in helping to Change our world through the combined ‘powers of ones'.' So let the Change begin. One by one, together we can transform the world....