Getting accustomed to negativity is not a good idea.

Let’s take a minute to imagine what Buddha would say if he saw today’s world. Would he be proud or disappointed of humanity’s growth? In my opinion, latter one is slightly more likely. Did we really improve as humanity? Perhaps, in some ways we improved tremendously such as, technologically, scientifically, economically and etc. But, did we manage to get better in more subtle ways such as, spiritually and psychologically. It doesn’t seem so. We are being selfish. We are being selfish to a degree that it becomes new normal. Betrayal becomes normal, dishonesty becomes normal and hatred becomes normal. We suppose it is the way it is. How many times we were surprized when we found ourselves truly being happy, joyful, content and satisfied? Even though, all these feelings are really constructive and positive, we feel alienated toward these feelings. Because, we rarely experience this kind of feelings. We all suggest to our children that bitterness, rather than happiness, is a form of knowledge. I ask myself, if this is true? If we really get right what we are and why did we choose to become this way? It has always been thought that people who have been around the longest in the world are the ones having the most wisdom. So I set out to ask myself. What is wisdom? I came to conclusion that wisdom is the ability to understand what can and can’t be changed. It is the ability to know reality best we can. And, most of us are very far from that. Ten thousand years ago, we were still on the wheel of life. How many changes have we actually been through yet? It is almost seems we are going back to square one. In retrospect, Buddha would never judge us for our ignorance. He, just like any human being would understand how it is needless to blame anyone or anything. People are what they are. In the same time, he would think that it is more useful to have more insight into our ignorance. And, then, become aware, how we are contributing to bring change into our society.

For the last number of millennia humanity worked hard to eliminate ignorance. We defined freedom as being free of ignorance. Humans’ ability to adapt and learn is so powerful that now we manage to create our own ignorance. Never in our history as a species, were we so ignorant. It is happening again. Now, it is a matter of how to deal with it. The need to heal ignorance is more important than the need to destroy it. Despite all the benefits ignorance gives us, we are actually abandoning divine spark inside each of us. We are becoming more numb to the positives. But, embracing ignorance doesn’t make us happy. Embracing ignorance only helps us to accept that the world would be a much better place if some of the things we were doing are not as right as we thought they were.

We have the power to counteract the rising trend of negativity in our society. We can start to redirect anger and negative feelings to something positive. But, it is up to us to decide. If we don’t, the trend will not change. It is our Responsibility. The only thing we are determined to change is how miserable we are. It is our responsibility to learn to stop suffering. This is the realization that Buddha taught us. The realization that it is taking so long to understand is because we never studied how to live in the moment before.

We have been so indifferent regarding this issue. Most of us are incapable to embrace joyfulness. That would make us completely unmoved by all the negativity happening around us. In order to embrace joyfulness it would take considerable effort. Every day we have to use all the energy we have to do this simple act. For some of us, it might take lots of time. It is impossible for most of us, though. We would have to build our understanding of the moment we are living. If we look carefully at each moment and at every small occurrence happening during this moment, we would realize that we have access to something that is greater than all the misery in the world. However, if we learn to accept only one moment and what happens during this moment, we would learn that we are living just righteously. It is extremely difficult to do this every day, though. It is almost impossible to accomplish. But it is not really important how long it takes us. Most importantly, it does at some point. We have to settle down the dust in order to see ground we are standing on.

Think for a second, how you act right now with your anger. Do you really think it would make you a better person? How you act right now is not important. It’s entirely dependent on your perception of what you are doing. We are capable to find holiness in even the simplest of things happening to us. This is something Buddha explained to us.

It is time we discover what is going on.

It is time we become aware of what is going on.

It is time we take action.