What Kind of World Do You Want to Live in?
And who are you willing to become to build it?
Many years ago, when young people would come to spend the summer living and working on my Vermont farm, we would have a first night Family Dinner. As we dined on farm-fresh produce on handmade ceramic plates, I would pose the question:
“What kind of world do you want to live in?”
Of course, they would begin with usual tropes: peaceful, plentiful, healthy, and hopeful. I love the enthusiasm of youth.
“Awesome. What else?” I would prod.
Then came the list of buzz-words: whatever was trending that week, month, or year. Things like anti-oppressive, free health care, anti-racist, pro-women, pro-LGBTQIA+, free education, free speech, etc.
“Alright, then. What do those great ideas look like…in practice?”
There was usually a pause, and then someone would offer something like, “A world where everyone and everything is free to be who they are?” Yes, with a question mark at the end, as if timidly answering a professor’s question in their college class.
“Sounds perfect. And what are you going to do to make that happen?”
Silence.
That last prompt usually came right after we had finished our homemade strawberry/rhubarb pie, and after they helped with the dishes, I would send them off to bed with this final challenge:
“You need to start imagining the world you want to live in. Not just in in general ideas, but in detail. And start to explore who you need to become and what you are willing to do to make that a reality, or it will never happen. Sleep well!”
OK, I admit that was a hefty challenge to begin a summer of art-making, organic gardening, spiritual practice, communal living, bonfires and river swims, but I had an ulterior motive: my own desperation.
You see, I was looking at a world strained by a population explosion, environmental exploitation, resource shortages, political unrest, social backsliding, and a foreboding sense of doom. It was looking bleak (and it’s gotten bleaker since), and I was certain that if we didn’t start using our imaginations to come up with actionable solutions to the varied crises we faced, it was possible that my children and grandchildren wouldn’t have a world to call home. Or at least not one where everyone and everything had a fighting chance for a good life.
I figured that since my generation had made the mess, we were unlikely to fix it. It was going to be up to the younger generations to come up with some ideas, and better ones that we had. In my mind, these kids sitting around my kitchen table were our only hope, and I needed to inspire them.
But that wasn’t the only reason I dropped this dare in their tender laps.
Part of my own spiritual evolution was a movement from reaching towards an ideal spirituality that looked good on paper (or in the yoga studio or to some Tibetan monk) to discovering a practical, participatory, purposeful spirituality that worked in the real world.
Like many of us, I had spent years chasing an ideal of enlightenment believing that when I finally “woke up,” I would attain peace and everything would magically become perfect.
WRONG.
Sure, I had those enlightenment moments, but what they showed me was that seeing the light was just the beginning (and it can be painful to realize how blind you were). It’s what you do AFTER you “get it” that actually matters.
Enlightenment is really nothing more than turning on the light in dark room: You can finally see the mess you need to clean up! (and yourself in the mirror, too).
That’s when the work begins.
And it takes using your imagination.
Enlightenment is really nothing more than turning on the light in dark room: You can finally see the mess you need to clean up! That’s when the work begins.
Our creative imaginations create the world, and Creativity is one of the Ten Words explored in my forthcoming book, TEN WORDS: AN INTERSPIRITUAL GUIDE TO BECOMING BETTER PEOPLE IN A BETTER WORLD (Available Oct 1 on Amazon and elsewhere!)
But what does that mean?
Creativity refers to every action in our lives that involves the imagination, or the transformation of what is to what might be possible. Cooking a meal, tending a garden, building a business, raising children, or testing a scientific theory are all creative acts that bring into being that which didn’t exist until we created it. Like the Divine, we are bringing the world into existence moment by moment through our creative imagination. But Creativity doesn’t stop there; it’s in every word, thought, and deed of our daily lives. Every moment is a creative one. Literally. Even every breath we take creates the world (ask the trees who need our CO2 to live!).
Creative energy helps us grow, learn, and change. Our imagination and willingness to seek new or different ways of acting, thinking, or believing enables us to overcome or work through the hard times of our lives. Without the desire for something to change, to become something different, we remain mired in our troubles and patterns. But because we can imagine something different, we begin to make it so.
Yes, it begins with a vision – an imaginative idea. But in order to make that imaginative idea a reality, we have to see clearly what already exists (enlightenment) and what we need to do...in detail. And then we have to do it. That might mean we have to change ourselves.
Psychologist Rollo May said, “We express our being by creating. Creativity is a necessary sequel to being.” When we choose to align ourselves with our being—who we truly are at the core and which we only discover through inner spiritual attention — we find our authentic voice. Our unique, internal language is then expressed through our creativity in every moment, and we can become the people we imagine ourselves to be in a world that supports the Creativity of all.
We can become the people we imagine ourselves to be in a world that supports the Creativity of all.
The same is true for our families, communities, countries, and planet. The very human creative urge is what enables us to have and raise children, build schools and hospitals, playgrounds and parks, businesses and non-profits. Because we can imagine it, we can build it. The world becomes through our imaginations. That means we have a responsibility to create well, to create a better world.
I needed the young people who came to the farm to see my summer-long challenge as an opportunity to move beyond illusion, to see things as they are, to access their divine creativity to become the people they claimed to want to be, and to put their imaginations to good use. I needed them to envision a different world and then put their hands in the dirt to make it happen. As the sign in the barn kitchen they saw every day says, “You don’t weed, you don’t eat.”
That is still my vision. Only it’s not just the kids on the farm. It’s all of us. We all need to wake up from the illusion that it’s all going to be unicorns and rainbows or it’s someone else’s job to fix things. We are the only ones who can do it. We need to engage our creative imaginations, take responsibility, and get our hands in the dirt to become the people we have to become and build the world we all want to live in.
Creative idea by creative idea.