I want to change the world

I have a theory that we are all born with a desire to change the world. We are made with a little black box that is embedded deep somewhere, protected from the world. Its job is to propel us to invent, create, make. It is the magic seed that progresses the human race. It is the source of radical advocacy, social justice, education for the poor, gender and race equality. It can be credited with world records, award-winning novels and films, and the contents of the world's best and worst art galleries. Sadly it can also be thanked for mass murder, domestic violence and slashed train seats.

I was going to be a lawyer and fight the good fight. I was going to write a novel. I was also going to change the culture of schools in the northern suburbs to ensure that all kids learned to speak and read. I was going to introduce the teens of Kew to Jesus and turn their priorities up side down. I was going to listen to and comfort and heal the depressed. I was going to be an awesome mum who understood her own limitations and those of her children but loved them regardless.

At some point in everyone's life the little black box is exposed. Someone finds it. And what they do with it pretty much determines what it is used for into the future of the bearer's life. Is it scorned and shamed? Is it tarted up and worshipped? Is it held and honored? It might be found at 6 months, 12 years, 23 or 38 years. It might be buried on discovery or removed or deactivated. It might remain dormant and then rediscovered at a more conducive time. Perhaps it can even just tick away over a lifetime, melding with the tick of the heartbeat and pulse.

Without it a human is either boring, mean, or dead.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." Viktor Frankl