For a moment, I’d like to ask you to image that this page is a mirror. Perhaps, better yet, finish reading what is written here and go find a mirror and decide how you intend to be from this point forward.

Since the election in The United States last fall, it has become really obvious that we are no longer a group of countries or states that are going to survive by taking actions that are in our own enlightened self-interest alone. We are going to have to take actions that are considerate of all of the people on the planet.

Economic solutions that don’t work for us, won’t work for the world and vice versa.

We have lived on credit, everyone pays the price.

We have been greedy, everyone pays the price.

We have believed that a strategy regarding what we need to do will be adequate to solve the problem.

We claim children have been our priority and the 25,000 who died today needlessly of hunger and persistent starvation didn’t think so.

Notice that if you haven’t been doing any of these things, you won’t feel badly at all. You will simply continue to do what you know needs to be done.

Kids who have no sense that they have value continue to walk into schools and places of business to demonstrate that they are powerful and in charge. This week it was in Germany.

We have been looking for solutions that exist outside of ourselves and mostly about that which needs doing; almost no conversation has been had about how we need to be.

We have people hoping that President Barack Obama will be the solution. He could not do it alone if his life depended on it.

There are those who want him to fail; they are certainly not part of the solution.

We now have yellow bracelets about ending hunger and hunger has not ended. We have green ones for saving the environment and we continue to destroy ancient, never cut forests and defoliate the rainforests. We have source books of every religion and find ways to kill each other about being which one is right.

We’re going to have stimulus now. Perhaps stimulus is like stimulus in other environments. It doesn’t necessarily mean the person providing it will be about loving-kindness or even around in the morning.

I suggest what we need to be doing right this second and perhaps for a very long time is deciding how we intend to be with one and other and, as we perfect our ability to love all people, we will come to a place where our doingness will be just the right thing.

When we provide food, perhaps because we believe we are better than others, we do not allow people to assist in the preparation, serving or clean up of a meal. Does it feel better to be dependent or independent?

We believe we are better than some. We create correctional institutions so that they can become corrected and like us. The fact that you cannot behavior modify anyone into wellness, just a footnote. All damage comes from damage. Are we willing to begin at ground level and do no harm?

How could we decide today to be that would make an impact on every person with whom we come in contact?

What would happen if we decided our business could be about loving-kindness and providing internet service?

Recently, I was heartened by the members of a local school committee and the administrative team of that same school district who came together one night to discuss how important how they were being with one and other was to the faculty and students of that school. What impact might we have? Could people be honored and respected while disagreed with completely? Would it be important that our students knew that the reason we do what we do is because we care about whether their lives turn out?

What might happen if there weren’t any “lives of quiet desperation?”

How could we decide to be today to contribute to the lives of our spouses? Our children? Everyone’s children? Could it be that the real issues are about the kind of world we create for children we will never see and never know?

Make yourself a magical time in the mirror!