Enormous Opportunities, and Doing Everything at Once
The economic crisis is creating enormous opportunities. Everybody is in trouble. (laughter) Everybody. The collapsing society is collapsing on the necks of a large number of people, not just the hopelessly discouraged permanent poor, who are supposedly trained to just die quietly. The damage is reaching all sections of the population. Peace activists, I think, starting from their key issues, must tie peace into all the . . . places people are hurting. Many of you obviously are. . . . I think all peace activists must be encouraged to challenge a broad range of issues.
We’re out to change [we intend to change] the world in every possible way that makes it safer for people to live. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble if we move boldly and confidently, using the tools that we’ve had a chance to learn—even though we’ve only learned them partially up to now. I don’t think we’ll have any serious problem at all achieving all this.
The internalized oppressive patterns will try to drag us down, but so what [why does that matter]? We know the tools to use against them.
We have to take the boldest, sharpest, broadest outlook and at the same time keep wiping the mud off our trousers, getting the distress off ourselves, making firm decisions against it so that we go ahead. We have to discharge. We can get that efficient. We have to do everything at once, but there’s nothing contradictory about that. We have to do everything at once, but that’s exactly what we’ll enjoy doing.
The cleaning up of our acts [the improving of our functioning], as clients, as counselors, as peace activists, as leaders of the world, is overdue. We know enough now to do it right. Let’s land a mighty blow [make a powerful and successful strike] . . . against the confusion that up to now has kept us from doing that well.
From pages 115 to 116 of “A Favorable Situation for Reaching Out,” in Start Over Every Morning
(Present Time 193, October 2018)