Simplifying Life

The aim is the simplifying of life, eliminating what is not ours to control.  We may have interest in those things, and express opinions, but most often it must end there.  We would also do well to not consider what others think of us since the thoughts belong to them and -- right or wrong, accurate or not -- they belong to someone else.  We might be more adversely influenced were we to allow our actions to be tailored by what others think, or how they might respond.  Begin, if you can, to narrow your life, trusting others to live their own, to be who they are with all the thoughts, ideas, hopes, and wishes they would hold.

This does not preclude interest in issues of import, but it does mean they are ours in only a limited way.  However, when we join with others our voices are more readily heard, more easily recognized as transcending what any one of us might offer or have control over.  Giving our identity to the group, giving up responsibility for it and specific choices about it, each of us is magnified as we gather into the entirety.  By becoming a group, not needing for now to be individuals, our influence extends well beyond who we might singly be.  In this way we can make wars end and sometimes bring justice into places where it had seemed unable to breathe.