A better world, a better self

With the earth collapsing from all of its weight of human errors, and humans being the largest contributors to its slow demise, how do we make it better?

Or more importantly: Can we make it better?

An impressionable friend of mine, who applies a new learning or theory every other week, it seems, cancelled his honeymoon to India after having read a book on the overheating of our world. Unnecessary travels consuming jet fuels, emitting vast amounts of ozone-damaging carbon dioxide, amongst others, intrigued his forever-evolving brain. He decided that he and his future wife should try and undertake an environmentally-friendly honeymoon instead. Something that represents better who they are, and helps the little bit that counts towards saving this precious planet on which we live. Off to the Queen Charlotte islands they went - countless hours of ferry rides, biking and walking for 2 solid weeks. And they, are no tree-hugging granolas.

Another environmentalist acquaintance attended a protest on the teardown of a neighbourhood park to build another cookie-cutter Tim Horton's in his hometown. His deep belief and passion for the environment, it seems, is something he is willing to show all the way. Though he feels beaten and discouraged at times ("Inevitably you make more enemies than friends," he once said to me), he is still open to coming up short of his aspirations, as long as he makes his point across somehow, no matter how small a fraction.

In speaking of aspirations: do the great things in life require the most sacrifice?

I have yet to find mine. The most difficult challenge I have for myself, I hate to admit, has been simply making myself a better person. It is a challenge solely because it is a never-ending goal; or so it seems. The more I think I've discovered something, and made progress, the more I find things that can be better. As shitty as they are when romantic relationships end, for instance, they have been my biggest blessings in learned-experiences - how to tackle myself by seeing it through someone else's eyes. My work, my friends' and other people's experiences, my family and its history and therefore my upbringing, are also grand contributors. From those, it seems to me, I can only control to change myself, not other people, by learning about what, who, where, when, why, and how things came about to become as they are; as tomorrow, I can only try to be better than myself today.

Perhaps I'm just too critical of myself. Then I remind myself what someone wise told me once: being in the middle of any journey entailing discovery, evaluation and adaptation, automatically also means that there will always be more questions, more to do, and things you could do better. This, ultimately, applies to whichever cause.

How can we heal the world? Do we attain such a goal by reaching outwards - using our skills, knowledge, and passion all put into it? Or do we simply believe that by fixing the 'we' now based on past learnings, the future will inevitably fix itself? Is the only medicine to change the future to become an active participant?

Above all else, even if there were nothing else left to be admired, I will still admire that. I admire all things that I am not. But in the end, whether you work your way in from the outside, or out from the inside, we are all here only to fulfill the same dream.