I started this block to write about beauty. The ugliness of our world is already overly present in all kinds of media, and I believe we have to focus on the positive to become more positive. Encourage people instead of pointing out their mistakes. Look through the objective of your camera and find something beautiful to focus on even in the most desperate or ugly looking scenes.
But once in a while, you have to open the other side of your eyes and face the ugly truth. Otherwise, you will not be able to clean it out, polish it and make a new beautiful diamond out of the mud covered stone.
A conversation with an 18-year-old ideologist across the globe can have that effect on you. Last weekend, an amazing student was telling me all about his heroes and his dreams. About how fortunate he was to have been selected with 499 others out of 250000 applicants to follow an excellent educational programme. How he plans on working as hard as he can to repay the community, and give as much back as possible. How he plans on helping poor kids get an education in India. And his dreams about eventually spreading his aid to Africa, where people are even less fortunate than those in his own country. A few minutes before these answers to one of my questions, he was sending me beautiful pictures of his hometown Kerala, making his hometown look and sound like paradise. This student sees the true beauty in the world and in its people, but also sees what needs to be addressed. He dreams about a better world, and about being an active part of making it happen.
He truly inspired me. Where did we leave our ideals? They were as high as the Kilimanjaro at that age, and today they are like the Mont Saint Michel: flooded and inaccessible at times, then resurrecting again, but you just know they will disappear again as soon as they came back. The path to rightness is an adventurous one, sometimes difficult, and definitely far out of our so beloved comfort zone.
That same weekend, I heard people talking about the heads of a local mafia family being released out of jail in Maasmechelen, because of a procedure error in court. And that got me thinking. Our ancestors fought hard to obtain our human rights, and we are extremely grateful for that and forever in their debt. Equal rights regardless of sex, race, religion, color, origin, social class, and other aspects that used to separate us, for centuries people could only dream about that.
But today I can’t help but wonder: did we not take it a bridge too far – just as we did with capitalism leading to overconsumption – ? How can we allow notoriously known criminals to walk our streets, in the name of justice? Is justice not anymore doing what is right? Sure, the other side of the medal is not beautiful either. If we would allow criminals to be locked up without what we call a ‘fair trial’, then we might end up by locking up innocents as well. Can we call them ‘casualties of war’? Streetwars? How many of the wrongly convicted people were truly completely innocent? Has anyone ever done a study on these numbers? I would be interested in knowing that. Or were the majority small criminals being convicted for the wrong crime? In our world today, if you are truly innocent, would you be framed for someone else’s crimes? And why would someone pick you out? I am not sure about this. I would like to look deeper into this. Maybe the findings of this inquiry would help to take a decision to change some of our laws, and help put the notorious criminals with expensive lawyers behind bars. Maybe this would prevent from having a bunch of them leaving our court of law with loud cheers as they did here in Antwerp a while ago. Maybe that would mean the possibility of a better future for the youngsters in my classroom who were born in such a notorious crime family. Maybe, just maybe, it would be a small step back and a big leap forward to achieve real justice. What if, instead of discussing an issue and being horrified about it, we started thinking about a solution, and we had the energy to get people involved, develop the idea, and make it happen?
That Indian student was talking about his heroes: Castro, Guevara, Lincoln etc… people who lived to change the lives of the less fortunate. Inspiring people. What do we do to change the world? We will talk about travels soon again, in the meantime, I hope you feel as inspired as I am by this young man. Don’t hesitate to share your ideas, no matter how crazy. The world can use a spark of craziness to brighten it up.
Look at our world as a big artwork in progress, and think about the next necessary step in the creation of perfection…
nspirelife 