WWMLKD?

I often ask people what kind of change they’d like to see in the world and what they are doing to help bring it about. Some people can answer straightaway while others have to waffle a bit before realizing that their intentions don’t always match their behavior. However, it’s always so encouraging to find those great souls that can answer with a gleam in their eye, those people who have been to the mountaintop and are constantly blazing trails for others. These are the people who change the world.

When world changers come to mind for me, Dr. King is right up there among my top ten. His words have resonated through the minds and hearts of people around the world for the last fifty years. Even as I listen to his speeches now, it seems as though they were written about the challenges we face today. Such it is with the world changers: the effects that they have on the world are timeless and reverberate far beyond their imagined intention.

I’ve wondered a few times over the last few years, as more and more people are starting to wake up to the way that the world is shifting, just how Dr. King would proceed given our current state of affairs. Although his most honored success was his instrumental role in paving the way for civil rights in America, he never saw the end of his final battle against the Vietnam War. If he were alive today, would the fights against the wars of the last decade have been stronger? Would he have been heard through the people’s mic of Wall Street, his words occupying the tongues of those who would echo his dream? Would he be standing against the impending fascism of monetized politics? Or would he have seen another angle from which to take his foe?

I believe that the spirit which gave Dr. King his great connection to the rest of us still lives on among us. I believe that the great spirit of world changers throughout history still compel us to rise up in the face of challenges to the community which supports us, that beloved community which rises in the aftermath of love and nonviolence. I believe that each of us has within us that spark that guides us toward our greatest being, and each time we stand for what is right, virtuous, just, and noble, that power is there to push us along.

We are quite remiss to not have a leader such as Dr. King as we face the oppressors of our day. However, for the road ahead, as we walk toward the promised land together hand in hand, more and more we are realizing that this movement is not about a single leader. It is about the movement of the people. May each of us open up to that light within that calls us to be the heroes we have been waiting for, and may we realize that we are all we need to change the world.