Attitudes Change First Before Lasting Change is Realized

A familiar saying emblazoned on many greeting cards and bumper stickers reads,

"Be the change you want to see in the world." 

Since I've noted this credited to more than one person, I will refrain from providing its authorship. 

This gimmicky phrase, I've come to believe over the years since I first quoted it myself back in the early 90's, now falls flat as a warped and shallow platitude. After all, one man's change could be another man's being held back. I believe it also pits individual against individual in a quest for "change as I identify change," all in a context of self-aggrandizement.

But the slogan also misses a crucial point: that one cannot have change without a transformation of attitude. 

And attitude itself must also have a criteria in order for it to allow for the mutual respect required in order for the majority of folks to go forward in actual goodwill.

Paul Tournier, in his 1948 book, Escape from Loneliness, writes:

"The pressure of public opinion is everywhere toward division, competition, opposition...We realize therefore that individual efforts cannot suffice unless supported by a radical reform in popular attitudes. The whole philosophy of our age produces in modern men an independent, possessive, and vengeful spirit that sets them against one another...the result is the accumulation of suffering in discord..."

If the cause is attitude, and the solution is attitude, what then? 

How do we change from the attitude of cause to an attitude of solution? 

I would think it would be to adopt the opposite of what Tournier mentions above as being the cause: 

An other-centered attitude vs. a self-centered attitude
A non-threatened and non-easily-offended attitude vs. a possessive attitude
A forgiving, non-transactional attitude rather than a vengeful attitude

To get from the cause-of-problems attitude to the solving-problems attitude, we can ask ourselves, "Why?" 

Why am I controlling, critical and constantly self-justifying, never admitting where and when I, too, have been at fault? 

Why is it the other person, the other group, the other community, the other political party that is to blame? Why is it never, apparently, me? 

And why do we feel the need to assign blame before we can move on?

Answer honestly, and our attitudes begin to change. 

And as they do, so much of life will also begin to change, morphing into healing words and acts constructive of vibrant new beginnings and enduring grace-filled progress between mankind. 


copyright Barb Harwood