Gone are the days when I had the freedom of being lackadaisical about my choices or even my beliefs. The carefree past is behind us all, and we are being called to question the very glue that binds us to our individual thought patterns while being forced to take a look within and decide how we would like to interact with others.
Because it is in our interaction with others where our future lies.
When our compassion turns a blind eye in favor of separation, misogyny, or any other form of prejudice, we distance ourself from the widespread need to address our rights as humans.
We seem to absolutely love isolating our-selves from one another as much as possible and fail to actually love. Many of us are aware of the invisible walls that we create and some of those built walls are still-held beliefs that any one group is superior, which proselytizes us from the truth that all of us are one and the same.
We should be working towards banishment of impropriety in replacement of empowering individuals. Yet, there are still many of us whom are chained to a systematic ideology that fails to tell us the truth: that we are born equal and it is time for all of our rights to be the same.
When our ideologies include any sort of oppression, whether it's hatred or an exclusion of self from community, we are disregarding the divine truths of life and need to question how to fully develop our human potential.
While we must search for peace with peace -- we can not nor will not achieve a better tomorrow if we are implementing any sort of violence today, we also can't back down to those with a tradition of abuse or interest in an exclusion of any one of our voices. And we won't.
In order to see change, we must speak about it and come up with solutions to the questions we are forcefully being asked. It not only comes down to our interactions with one another but to our relations with self.
We are stubborn to a fault, and we often have 147 ideas about how to change an acquaintance's life but fail to recognize that we also need to change.
Change is a step-by-step process and an evolution that materializes when we are hard-working and patient in our progress. We can bridge the gap, but not if we fail to address where we want to go from this point forward and be willing to be flexible and vulnerable in our own lives. We need to let in a little room for love to see more love.
The destination we should seek is the one that brings us together rather than apart. It is the day when the difficult questions are answered that we should be striving for. And this future we seek is full of people with changed fundamental beliefs due to a shift in perspective that includes the understanding of equal rights and interconnectedness.
We are doing a disservice to one another when we fail to recognize that not speaking up causes injustice and going with the flow constitutes as laziness and indifference rather than acceptance by our peers.
Indifference tells us that our problems are too large for us to solve.
Indifference doesn't tell us the truth. The truth tells us that when there is less internal chaos, there will be less external chaos.
After all, adaptation gives us personal freedom which often rewards us with insight and vision. One of the many questions we should be asking our-selves is what we want our society's grand vision to be -- what do we see for the whole beyond our personal self?
Avoidance of our society's issues is long gone in place of the need to make decisions promptly. It is true our issues extend far beyond misogyny, racial prejudice, or homophobia; there's a trend of turning a blind eye and fearing all that is unknown.
But I welcome the unknown because the only thing we must fear is what we have known in the name of avoidance and separation.
When we welcome the unknown, we will be able to step into our new shoes that are One Size Fits All. It is then when we will know the true definition of unity and love.
Garrett Paknis is an artist, actor, and activist. He created and writes www.justenlightenment.com.
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