World Peace Starts With You

Love is acceptance.  It is whatever brings you closer to peace, both inside and outside of you.  Love is following your heart because that will bring you to inner peace.  Love is serving others because that is what will bring you to outer peace.

World peace starts with you.  It’s a decision to be completely true to yourself.  Only through that truth can you have a positive impact on the planet.  If you are not true to yourself, if you are lying or holding yourself back, how can you expect to make the world a better place?

When you take away the borders, the politics, and the skin color, we’re all human.  Every human feels emotion.  Every human feels sadness and joy.  Every human wants to be loved and has the capacity to love.  It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that every single person you pass by today feels things and struggles just as much as you do.

As individuals we build forts around ourselves.  We need more security, more money, more stuff.  The more we acquire, the more we are afraid to lose.  We become preemptively defensive and emotionally withdrawn from the world.  As nations we reinforce that fear.  We hoard resources, build military, and create immigration laws to protect against other nations, against other people.

We spend so much energy protecting ourselves against others that we lose sight of one very simple fact – we are all one human family sharing this planet.  What would the planet look like if we took all the energy we spend protecting ourselves and spent it helping each other?

Imagine a world with no borders.  No military and no wars.  No poverty because the trillions of dollars that governments spend globally on defense are invested in humanity.  Is it so hard to imagine?  It has nothing to do with religion, capitalism or socialism.  It’s about being human and accepting that everyone else is too.

You have the power to create a world based on love.   You shape the world with every choice you make – the way you treat people, the way you earn money, the words you speak, the products you use, and the companies you support.  Every day is an opportunity to cultivate love towards yourself and others.

When you serve others, you serve yourself.  You create the groundwork for a magical world where every person is his brother’s and sister’s keeper.  When you serve others, they serve you.  You can focus on watching out for yourself or you can imagine a world where seven billion people are watching out for you.

It all starts with you.