Posts Tagged ‘change the world’

Driving to Change the World

// July 7th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // life

I really like the idea of changing the world. In some way, big or small, I want to have a positive impact on the world. I think charities are great and there are many more organizations that do wonderful things. I don’t like all the beuracracy and overhead that many of the organizations have to deal with. Besides all that, I don’t have a whole lot of disposable income or time to volounteer. So, I want to share with you the small things I try to do on a day to day…nay…an hour by hour basis. It is easy to look at the big picture and pick out the beautiful parts. It is harder to make choices consistantly when people are not looking and may never know. This is what I challenge you to do.

So here is the first thing that I try to do. It is not going to change the world to some crazy extent and most people won’t even have a clue that I make this effort, but I know that if just a few more people take this approach it will help the greater good.

When I drive my car, or any car for that matter, I pretend like every other driver on the road could potentially be my mom in a rental car. Feel free to substitute mom for mother-in-law, bosses wife, teen age daughter, you get the picture. Everytime I get mad or pissed off, I take a step back (figuratively), and think what if that is my mom. I would not want to drive up next to someone and flip them off or cut them off and slam on the breaks or something; only to find out it is my mom. I am however, a big fan of the horn. My horn does my talking for me. I make sure that it is a honk that represents what I would say, given the chance. Sometimes people just need to know that they did something wrong so they don’t do it again (ideally). If we could get everyone to take this approach I think we would have a lot more people happy and fewer accidents that cause even more frustration, anger, and stress than the often times very small thing it stemmed from. So let’s all choose our attitude when we are driving. You can still be in a hurry and drive fast, just don’t get all frustrated and do silly things when some car is left lane cruising.

This is something that is not easy for me, but I truly feel that small things like this lead to better self control, awareness of others, and eventually a better place to exist.

Feel free to comment and share on twitter. I am going to be using a new hashtag #ideasthatchangetheworld I know it is long, but sometimes small effects take big efforts.