Help others. We all have a calling in life. And I believe it boils down to one thing: You are here on this planet to help other people. In fact, none of us can exist very long without help from others. This is brought home forcefully in a story that Garret Keizer recounts in his insightful book Help: The Original Human Dilemma. Supposedly in hell the damned sit around a great pot, all hungry, because the spoons they hold are too long to bring the food to their mouths. In heaven, people are sitting around the same pot with the same long spoons, but everyone is full. Why? Because in heaven, people use their long spoons to feed one another.
Learn your rights. We're losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don't know anything about our freedoms. At a minimum, anyone who has graduated from high school, let alone college, should know the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and study them at home. And when the time comes, stand up for your rights.
Speak truth to power. Don't be naive about those in positions of authority. As James Madison, who wrote our Bill of Rights, observed, "All men having power ought to be distrusted." We have to learn the lessons of history. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office.
Don't let technology be your God. Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us. Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what's really going on in America and around the world. As a result, we've begun mimicking the inhuman technology that surrounds us and lost sight of our humanity. If you're going to make a difference in the world, you're going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens.
Give voice to moral outrage. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." There is no shortage of issues on which to take a stand, whether it's government surveillance, police shootings of unarmed Americans, homelessness, poverty, endless wars, SWAT team raids, overcriminalization or profit-driven private prisons.
Cultivate spirituality. When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism, we have lost our moral compass. We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology, materialism and politics.
Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners:
[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motive and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
We didn't listen then, and we still have not learned: Material things don't fill the spiritual void. As King said, we have to start putting people first.
Pitch in and do your part to make the world a better place. Don't rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. As King noted, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." In other words, don't wait around for someone else to fix what ails you, your community or nation. As Gandhi urged: "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
Finally, you need to impact the government, be part of the dialogue on who we are and where we're going as a country. It doesn't matter how old you are or what your political ideology is. These are just labels. If you have something to say, speak up. Get active, and if need be, pick up a picket sign and get in the streets. And when civil liberties are violated, don't remain silent about it. Take a stand!
The only way we'll ever achieve change in this country is for this generation of young people to say "enough is enough" and fight for the things that truly matter.
I shall end as Dr. King ended his commencement address to the graduates of Oberlin College in June 1965:
Let us stand up. Let us be a concerned generation. Let us remain awake through a great revolution. And we will speed up that great day when the American Dream will be a reality.
WC: 1385
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