Everyone talks about wanting world peace and eternal happiness. Everyone seems to believe that if you just talk about it or blame someone else for ruining it, you can achieve it. I believe, as Gandhi once said, and as the poster summarizes, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” My life pursuit is to be that world peace and acceptance. My pursuit in life is to find that peace inside myself and then pass it on to others. I believe that there are many problems involving hate, greed and violence in the world today. But I do not believe that I can help solve them until I am free of those destructive feelings myself. A drowning person cannot save another drowning person unless he or she knows how to swim, or it will only make matters worse. If everyone can look inside themselves and become loving and compassionate, all the other problems of the world, like hunger and poverty will fall into place. I want to be able to start that worldwide awakening with my own awakening, and hopefully start a natural chain of events.
There are several ways that I want to pass on the importance of peace and acceptance. In a career sense, I can communicate it through art or writing, as I have done through this poster and essay. But more importantly, looking beyond a career, I want to apply it to my everyday life through conscious actions and words. I want to pursue a life where my actions are an example that hopefully encourages others to pursue that same goal.
In the collage, there are many symbols. The open eye in the middle of the world represents everyone awakening to the truth. Prejudices and stereotypes blind people to what everyone really is. If we open our eyes and look past the appearance of a person, we can achieve complete compassion and love for them. The people on my world are not just talking about having peace; nor are they forcing peace through war. They are tapping into the bright colorful light that surrounds them and becoming that peace. They have opened their eyes and have looked past all their threatening differences and are now just happy to be alive together. My goal in life is to be one of those people on this world. I want to open my yes and embrace everyone and become the change that I want to see.
Hopefully by sharing this with you I will have become one step closer to my goal of sharing the message of love and compassion with my world. I believe this is a goal that must be started with small steps, which will hopefully end up leading to a big change. Thank you very much.