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change the world
February 2009 
Think You Can't Change the World? Too Late...
Mary_C
"Think you can’t change the world? Too late, you already have. It was changed for the better the minute you were born. There are more people than you can imagine who will never be the same because they came in contact with you, if only for a fleeting moment." - Gail Pursell Elliott, "The Dignity and Respect Lady"
I was going to add an "editor's note" saying that we could replace "who will never be the same" with "whose lives were made better...," but then I remembered it can go many ways, including "whose lives were impacted negatively," which brought to mind Goethe.
"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."
Access: Public
this is especially appropriate for me today, i tend to lean toward the negative due
to early childhood conditioning. Also read that as humans we are more apt to remember
the negative because it was a safety mechanism deeply ingrained in life to avoid
threatening situations but now that we are bombarded with so much information constantly
it can cause stress. i have not had television for about 7years now but NPR still keeps
me abreast of the violent global chess game going on right now.