“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”
Unknown monk, c. 12th century
Life is so very short. It goes by quickly. The time passes whether we’re living out our own vision with intention or not. So why not live your life in a way that is mindful and intentional and based on the vision of what you want for your life?
I created the Wayfinder Journal to guide me through the process of creating a ten year life vision. I created the Wayfinder Planner to take action on that throughout the year. Underlying this process is the desire to live a life based on what is true to me – not social expectations, achievements, goals.
If there is a goal, it is to live intentionally, mindfully, and to be present in the lives that we have been gifted.
To choose to live without distraction. To choose connection. Connection within ourselves and to each other.
We can sense, so acutely these days, how disconnected we are from ourselves and from each other and from the earth. We’ve been caught up in cycles of consumption and distraction and busy-ness, which only serves to reinforce our disconnection from ourselves and from each other. From our humanity. It makes us unable to see the full impact of the choices we make rippling out through the world.
The true hope I have and the ultimate intention in encouraging you to get clear on the life you truly are meant to live, is to step out of the distraction of consumption and busy-ness, to reconnect with yourself, so we reconnect as a community of people.
There are just so many incomprehensibly awful things occurring across the globe, and they continue because we stay silent to maintain our comfort. We just accept these incomprehensible things happening as the status quo of what happens ‘over there’. We are disconnected.
We have been unable or unwilling to step into the discomfort of really, truly witnessing all that happens in the world and to take full ownership of the impact of how we live.
Have you ever considered the real cost of your comfort?
There is huge discomfort from saying and doing the hard thing, the right thing, when not a lot of other people are, when the norm is to just stay silent. This is just not how I believe we’re meant to live – isolated from one another in thought and action. We are meant for community, which means it is necessary to understand how our actions impact others. But we live in a system that exploits the vast majority of the globe to maintain the comfort of the few. This cannot continue.
It can be incredibly overwhelming to consider all the things that are happening throughout the world.
Unless you’ve really understood the connection between colonialism and white supremacy you might not have seen or understood how it exists and how it impacts people everywhere, and only superficially benefits a very small few. (I say superficially because even when one thinks they benefit from it, it comes at the cost of their humanity.)
What is happening in the States is something we might have thought would never happen…but it is being mirrored here. We heard the narrative of ‘rigged elections’ in the States which led to an attempted coup. Here, Conservative voters have a high level of distrust with the recent election results. The Conservative party sent out a post-election email suggesting liberals rigged the results.1 These are warning signs that we need to pay attention to, and not be passive in standing against. It’s easy to play it off as “it’s not that bad, that’s not going to happen here”, but that’s staying in a mindset of comfort instead of one of accountability and action.
In Ontario, the Ford government has proposed Bill 5, which will strip environmental protections, override standing treaties with First Nations, and fast track development. The bill was introduced quietly but it is something we need to be informed about, and loudly and vehemently oppose. Contact your MPPs, write letters, make your sentiments known.
There is the ongoing crisis in Gaza. Israel is saying out loud that their official policy and strategy is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. There is currently no food or aid getting into Gaza – children are literally skin and bones and are dying. Infants are expected to die in the tens of thousands in the next few days. This situation is playing out exactly as everyone who has been advocating for Palestinians have said it was going to happen. World leaders are finally – FINALLY – speaking out against the actions Israel is taking. It requires people being informed and involved, it requires a lot of action, it requires people to not stay silent.
Apartheid of Palestine wasn’t new to me, but I’ve learned so much more about the occupation of Palestine by Israel and how much violence has been done to the Palestinian people since 1948. I had a huge wakeup call after October 7th 2023. The subsequent genocide is so obviously wrong, so obviously ignoring human rights, and none of our leaders spoke against it. And that shifted how I thought about the legitimacy of our systems and structure.
It brought my attention to…
- Yemen: oppression of women and terrible famine2
- The Congo: exploitive mining causing human rights abuses, violence against women, child labour3
- The Uyghurs: suffering crimes against humanity and genocide4
- Hawaii: annexation and occupation5
…and don’t forget…
- Canada: we have a long way to go with truth and reconciliation6
- Global exploitation of labour of garment workers7
- Climate change and human rights8
…and it goes on and on. When you start to look at root causes, you see how interconnected all of it is.
What does it say about our society if we allow this to continue? If we allow our comfort to override what’s right. What does it say about our belief in the rule of international law, and justice, and human rights, if we are not able to advocate for those who are being obliterated? Because we would rather stay silent in comfort or from fear of potentially offending someone?
A question I’ve learned to ask myself when considering my discomfort at speaking up for fear of ‘offending’ is “whose comfort am I protecting?” The oppressed or the oppressor? The privileged or the exploited? Protecting and prioritising the comfort of the privileged is ingrained in western/colonial/white supremacist culture, society, and systems, and that is the status quo we keep locked in, unless we’re willing to face the discomfort of stepping out of it.
The things that happen ‘over there’ are not separate from us. What we do over here every day impacts what happens over there.
You just might not be aware of how much it does.
It can be really overwhelming to start wrapping your head around the full scope of everything that is happening around the globe, how it’s all connected, and how to possibly make a difference. It’s quite literally impossible to even try and change all of the things all at one time, because how do you even begin to choose where to put your focus…but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t try at all.
What we do on a daily basis matters.
The way we live our life matters.
We are connected across the globe in a way that we (privileged white western/european people) don’t really and fully comprehend. We are being purposefully and actively encouraged, allowed, driven to be distracted and disconnected from each other – and it is to our collective and individual detriment. Being distracted and disconnected causes us to ignore our humanity and that of others. We need to end the status quo of comfort and distraction.
Our lack of awareness and involvement and ACTION will allow atrocities to continue happening. And when I say action, I mean calling our political leaders, showing up at protests, being aware of what we consume and the whole supply chain – where it’s coming from and how it’s sourced, become educated on the impact of the things we do, the decisions we make and how that ripples out so we can make better choices and use our voices and our bodies.
We literally can’t do that when we are so distracted and so busy that we are just trying to get through the day.
I very firmly believe that my comfort and convenience doesn’t trump other’s right to safety, security, and wellbeing. But we are allowing our comfort and convenience to trump others’ safety and wellbeing. Stop being distracted, get connected, and understand that we are all connected. We all have the right to live well.
When we are truly in connection – to the humanity within ourselves and the humanity in others – we quite literally have no choice but to start living in a way that doesn’t exploit or cause harm…that prioritises the wellbeing of all – the global community.
So that is my invitation to you – take your first/next step to be less distracted and more connected. To be way more intentional with the choices you make every day. To know yourself. To approach life in terms of ‘we’, not only ‘I’. Start within and it will ripple out in change across the world.
Take Action
- Rachel Gilmore; https://www.instagram.com/p/DJcKjzux_ax/
Rachel Gilmore is an Ottawa-based, award-winning journalist with extensive experience reporting on federal politics, human rights, disinformation, and extremism. ↩︎ - Yemen Crisis Explained: https://www.unrefugees.org/news/yemen-crisis-explained/ ↩︎
- Mining of cobalt, copper in DRC leading to human rights abuses: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/12/mining-of-cobalt-copper-in-drc-leading-to-human-rights-abuses-report ↩︎
- Who are the Uyghurs and why is China being accused of genocide: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037 ↩︎
- Under International Law Native Hawaiians are Victims of Genocide: https://hawaiiankingdom.org/blog/under-international-law-native-hawaiians-are-victims-of-genocide/ ↩︎
- Confronting genocide in Canada: https://humanrights.ca/news/confronting-genocide-canada ↩︎
- https://www.earthday.org/beneath-the-seams-the-human-toll-of-fast-fashion/ ↩︎
- https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/climate-change/ ↩︎