In the midst of great challenges, you can choose to feel okay.

Many people are saying we live in challenging times, but let’s be honest, most times are challenging. We’re all doing our best to make a living, to live a good, honest, decent life and there’s almost always challenges to face, obstacles to overcome, mountains to climb.

We can choose how to climb that mountain, how to face those challenges, how to surmount the obstacles in our path.

And the easiest way, the one that is always available to us is to choose to see it all as for our good and rise to meet whatever comes.* You can choose to feel okay, to see the good in other people. That is always within your control. Its the only thing within your control.

Stewing in frustration and anger or drowning in despair helps no-one, especially not yourself. Direct your thoughts to that which is beneficial for you.

Get angry, sure, there’s a lot to be angry about in the world, but channel it productively.

I want to change the whole world. That’s a fact. There’s so much I want to change I wouldn’t know where to start but it involves changing how people raise their children. Parents who are aware of how long lasting the impact of their words and actions are in the lives of their children’s minds, hearts, bodies and lives may well behave differently. Some people might decide not to become parents at all.

I want to change social care for children so if the worst comes to pass and they’re taken into care, it doesn’t automatically destroy the rest of their lives.

I want to change social care for our older citizens so they’re treated with dignity and respect and not subject to horrific abuses.

I want to change the current social and legal thinking around addiction and enable everyone to understand that addiction is not a moral failing or a lack of willpower, its a person’s damage playing out and their life trajectory is almost inevitable if they’ve experienced trauma.

I want to change prisons and how people are treated inside and to help every incarcerated person understand where the impulses came from that caused them to make the decision that ended with them being convicted.

I have enough anger to burn the whole world down and we haven’t even talked about animal cruelty and indigenous peoples and the horror of industrial animal farming and the destructive greedy mining and oil and pharmaceutical industries and their ilk. Oh, there’s much to be angry about!

But its not enough to just be angry, I want to use that to fuel change. I want to see the world change course from one filled with injustice, despair and poverty alongside obscene privilege and wealth. I want all those people, the very very few people, who have most of the money, instead of using it to create further inequality, to build more power and wealth hoarding, I want those people to wake up to the injustice of the system that made them so powerful and rich and help tear it down and use their money to serve the world where its most needed.

The whole world has been built on a system of exploitation and abuse of power. I’m angry and I want it all to change.

But, to do that I make sure I am filled with light. I fuel myself with positive energy, with happiness, with my truth and then I set out each day to make the changes I can effect, to do more to push for a tolerant, kind, equal society.

I focus on what I want to see in the world and I be that as much as I can be.

Because I know the worst prison to live in, is one of your own making. The mind can be as limiting as the smallest prison cell or as expansive as the vast Universe.

You always have the choice of what you think about. Think about the changes you want to see, equality, freedom, fairness, health, shelter, food and clothes for everyone. Start with yourself, and be the example.

Join the groups that speak to your heart, consolidate and together go further, faster.

Life works for us when we think clearly about what we want. Choose your thoughts and change everything.

Love,

Cynthia xx

*Please let me be clear, I am not saying systemic racism is okay. That’s one of the things I want to tear down.