Be the Change...

Many of us have grown attached to the famous Gandhi aphorism: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world," but I wonder what people would say if they were asked to explain Gandhi's meaning. Below is a brief exchange between a few high school kids who were recently struggling with their understanding of Gandhi's words.

Student One: It means what it says it means. Be the change. Be just like the change you want in the world.

Student Two: But I still don't get it. How can you be a change? How can anybody be a change?

Student Three: Well, you're not really the change. You behave the way people would behave if a change happened.

Student Four: What kind of change is that? What sort of change are we talking about?

Student Three: Think about what was important to Gandhi. It would be those kinds of changes.

Student One: Peace for one, right? You would be a person of peace, who brings peace to every situation.

Student Three: Yes, definitely peace. But not just peace in a quiet, passive way. It is peace that also involves nonviolent resistance, that encourages people to resist situations that are unfair and unjust.

Student Four: Like what? Like the untouchables being total outcasts?

Student Three: Exactly. If you are the change you wish to see, you fight nonviolently for making sure untouchables have rights, that they are treated decently by others.

Student Two: I'm starting to get it. If you want certain things, you can't just talk about them, you have to act like they matter to you.

Student One: I think that's right. But it's also true that Being the Change means you ARE the change, that you embody the change, that you do things all the time that show what you stand for.

Student Four: But didn't we say that. You would work for civil rights. You would rally people so that they support the idea that everyone enjoys a decent standard of living.

Student One: Yeah, yeah, all that. But you also live your whole life as if nonviolence and justice are the most important things. You give people another chance, you avoid yelling at them or frightening them. You try not to eat too much or talk too much, because you want others to be able to use the resources you might be using up

Student Two: You're losing me again. What resources are those?

Student One: All of them. Everything that helps to make life good: food, housing, healthcare, education, speaking time in a meeting. We who are privileged must use all these things moderately, so that there is more for others who have less.

Student Three: I don't know if I could live like that.

Student One: It goes with being the change, with sharing the planet's riches with others.

Student Four: What if we can't do this, if we can't find the patience and the generosity to pull this off?

Student One: I don't know, but I think it's possible that we might slowly destroy ourselves.

Student Two: That's horrible. There has to be another way.

Student One: Be the change, brother. Be the change you wish to see in the world.