OFG XI: Commitment to each other, part 2

Continuing on this topic I began in my previous post, this time I would like to talk about how things are changing on an individual level, or on the level we see in our personal interactions.

Just as businesses are beginning to come around to the fact that everyone wins when employees and business leaders are signed up for the same team, people around the globe are coming to the same awareness: we are all one.

While companies can make the lives of their employees more fulfilling by offering more at the workplace, the paths of millions in seeking to change the very nature of human interaction is dramatic and encouraging.

The key, the central hope for me, is to see this happening both on a conscious level--many new organizations have sprung up to promote this change--and at a subconscious level. It truly works for all of humanity to be coaxed along almost unknowingly as the trail blazers move toward the goal.

And, that goal? It's simple, and yet so daunting to consider: we can all come to see the common ground we share, our common requirement for clean water, air, and a planet to host us, and come to realize the folly of fighting.

Fighting is a bad tactic for one powerful reason: it simply doesn't work. It takes both parties down a path of devaluing life, insulting the planet, and defining the loss of human life as 'victory.' It degrades the winner just as badly as it leaves the loser beaten. And, it does little but set up the next fight, once the loser recovers enough to try again.

So, beyond the moral judgments which some make about it, fighting is stupid because the end result is harmful to all involved.

The seeds of peace are being nurtured all over these days. In the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian teenagers are brought together in a retreat scenario. This isolation from their normal social influences allows them to spend a few days getting to know each other as people instead of the faceless enemy. It is a small program, but the intent is clear: let people come to know their similarities, as that knowledge will smooth the rough edges of conflict.

Beyond the systematic efforts such as this one, there are so many people who have had their eyes opened. For some, it was war which prompted them to seek peace for all mankind. For others, it was learning of what war had done to a friend, a relative, or even a town around the world from them which they visited decades after its devastation. I recall in stark detail how horrified I was to see a memorial to the dead of World War I when I was stationed in Europe in the 70's. About 1.5 million people were killed or wounded in the battle of Verdun, a battle which lasted ten months. Hundreds of acres--beyond as far as the eye could see--of small markers all in neat rows proved the magnitude of this event. That short visit influences to this day my state of mind on this topic more than all the words I have read before or since.

I don't pretend in this short piece to do more than simply rejoice in what I see happening, even as my country continues to provide targets for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. This move to a more-loving world is not new, but it is gaining momentum in these last few years. Eventually, it will become an inevitable, irresistible wave which sweeps the idea of war off the face of the planet.

The joy in seeing it with my own eyes is to witness what love can accomplish. No pushing or cajoling, mind you...only love. Love in doses which cannot be denied, love which flows over all with the same gentle, warming light regardless of the history of the individual. Love which comes from each of us, returns to Source, and flows back renewed every second to fill our hearts.