A truly fantastic speech and declaration. I encourage you to watch it regardless of your current belief.

“#Trust30 (Self-Reliance) is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.” Today’s Challenge: Call to Arms

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the “call to arms” note you’re sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, board) charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next 5 years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see, preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.

You’ve just written your own job description. You know what you have to do. Go!

(Bonus: send it to the CEO with the title “The things we absolutely have to get right – nothing else matters.”)

I just wrote myself a love letter and said a prayer for anyone who feels stuck and unappreciated at their job.

Photo Courtesy of Daruman

The fallacy of security has been creeping around in my head. I chalk it up to all of the changes taking place currently and over the past couple of years. When our daily routine hits a snag or is altered (often times by things we have no control over) I think we have a tendency to search for, and cling to, things that make us feel safe and secure.

Lately, when I find myself searching for those things I am startled by the realization that they are no longer there. Many of my ‘security blankets’ were created when I was a child: a secret hiding place, a special stuffed animal, my mother or father’s lap.

As an adult (and especially now as a mother) I look at these things in quite a different light. I realize now that I selected these things because at the time they were impervious to whatever frightened me, they would always be there. My hiding place changed with each move, my stuffed animals became thread bare, my parents passed on. Each of those occurrences, while difficult to work through at the time, gave me the desire to move toward a stronger more secure self.

Yes, there are days when I would love to crawl up on my father’s lap, or snuggle next to my mother, but it’s my daughter’s turn to find safety wrapped in my arms, and I am glad to provide that.

Below, I’ve included excerpts from a TED speech given by playwright, Eve Ensler, and the inspiration behind this topic.

I’m very worried today about this notion, this world, this prevailing kind of force of security. I see this word, hear this word, feel this word everywhere: real security, security checks, security watch, security clearance. Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure?

What does anyone mean when they talk about ‘real security’, and why have we as Americans become a nation that strives for security above all else? In fact, I think that security is elusive: it’s impossible. We all die, we all get old, we all get sick, people leave us, people change us. Nothing is secure – and that’s actually the good news.

This is unless, of course, your whole life is about being secure. I think that when that is the focus of your life, these are the things that happen: You can’t travel very far or venture too far outside a certain circle; You can’t allow too many conflicting ideas into your mind at one time as they might confuse you or challenge you; You can’t open yourself to new experiences, new people, new ways of doing things – they might take you off course. You can’t not know who you are so you cling to hard matter identity: you become a Christian, Muslim, Jew; you’re an Indian, Egyptian, Italian, American; you’re a heterosexual, or a homosexual, or you never have sex – or at least that’s what you say when you identify yourself. You become part of an ‘us’. In order to be secure, you defend against ‘them’. You cling to your land because it is your secure place, you must flight anyone who encroaches upon it. You become your nation, you become your religion, you become whatever it is that will freeze you, numb you, and protect you from doubt or change. But all this does, actually, is shut down your mind. In reality it does not really make you safer.

All this striving for security, in fact, has made you much more insecure, because now you have to watch out all the time; there are people not like you, people who you now call enemies. You have places you cannot go, thoughts you cannot think, worlds that you can no longer inhabit. And so, you spend your days fighting things off, defending your territory, and becoming more entrenched in your fundamental thinking. Your days become devoted to protecting yourself – this becomes your mission. That is all you do. Ideas get shorter; they become sound bites. There are evil doers and saints, criminals and victims, there are those who if they are not with us are against us. It gets easier to hurt people because you do not feel what’s inside them. It gets easier to lock them up, force them to be naked, humiliate them, occupy them, invade them, and kill them because they are only obstacles now to your security.

…what I’m trying to say here is that if your end goal is security, and if that’s all you’re focusing on, what ends up happening is that you create not only more insecurity in other people, but you make yourself far more insecure.

Real security is contemplating death, not pretending it doesn’t exist; not running from loss, but entering grief, surrendering to sorrow. Real security is not knowing something when you don’t know it. Real security is hungering for connection rather than power. It cannot be bought, or arranged, or made with bombs. It is deeper, it is a process, it is an acute awareness that we are all utterly interdependent, and one action by one being in one tiny town has consequences everywhere. Real security is not only being able to tolerate mystery, complexity, ambiguity, but hungering for them, and only trusting a situation when they are present.

Freedom means that I may not be identified with any one group, but that I can visit an find myself in every group. It does not mean that I don’t have values or beliefs, but it does mean that I am not hardened around them; I do not use them as weapons.

In the shared future, it will be just that: shared. The end goal will be becoming vulnerable, realizing the place of our connection to one another, rather than becoming secure, in control, and alone.

The Charter for Compassion from TED Prize on Vimeo.

Compassion for all beings is a cornerstone, or more accurately, the keystone, of veganism…at least in my book. This message should be spread far and wide. If you are able (and agree) please pass it on.

Just passing along a beautiful and important message. The images in this video are just so stirring.