I desperately need greatness. You know, the one embodied by beings who stimulate the best in the people they meet, the one who makes us look up to see beyond what is limited to our personal space. You know, the greatness that opens the way to participate in a project greater than oneself, to surpass oneself, to bring out the best in human nature. You see ?
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
I don’t know if it’s all this noise, this din associated with our modes of communication, but I rather have the impression of being pulled down, stimulated in my worries, the urge to close doors and windows and just take care of my little navel. Like the impression of entering a huge bazaar filled with objects of all kinds, piled on top of each other in a huge mess. Items of value are not in evidence, because everything has been “garroched” in this place as if everything were equal, as if everything was worth the same price. Everyone is stepping on each other’s feet, some are screaming, others are fighting and those who have been chosen to order this disorder very often contribute to amplifying it.
I certainly don’t need to list the dramatic events that make the news, the reasons to worry about the future. Unless you’ve just come out of a coma or a trance that has lasted several years, you know what it’s all about. The world is under tension and will be more and more so. Like our planet, which is heating up and accumulating energy that it must eventually release, our societies are accumulating tensions that must also be released.
Mobilization capacity
I like to understand the concept of power as the ability to mobilize energy and direct it towards a goal. At the base, there is the physical and mental energy that an individual possesses and that he can mobilize to achieve a goal that he determines. Depending on the role a person plays in society, they may have access to a greater reservoir of energy. Thus, a business owner has in his reservoir the energy of his employees which he directs according to his own interests. Money also has this great ability to concentrate energy and deploy it in one direction.
In this sense, if you are wealthy, the potential in your reservoir is immensely greater than that available to someone who is not wealthy.
Very soon, in Quebec, a new election campaign will begin. In this context, my message is addressed mainly to politicians, but also to the media and to all of us who have more or less power to mobilize energy to direct it in one direction. I desperately need greatness. I need yours to help feed mine. It is nourished when I attend debates of ideas that are respectful, it is exhausted when I witness accusations of all kinds, overgeneralizations, divisions, “it’s the fault of others” .
As citizens, I need us to show greatness and take responsibility for our choices rather than constantly maintaining the belief that the tragedies that are coming are due to big business, money and capitalism. To think like this is to absolve us of our responsibilities. It’s still us who cheerfully buy this way of life that is offered to us.
To you politicians, I need your greatness to continue to hope that the debates can allow us to find ways of evolution and not of destruction. I don’t expect a new Gandhi or a new Mandela, but just perceive that you prefer to be inspired by them, even if it seems easier and more electorally profitable, sometimes, to simply demonize your opponent.