DAY 76 – ONE COMMON PURPOSE: WORKING TOGETHER FOR A BETTER FUTURE

A couple of months after the event at the field where we started to become more aware about problems that human beings have and the article in our student newsletter about not having problems our college held a forum titled “What Can We Do To Eliminate Problems”. The auditorium was filled with both students and faculty from our college.

When the event started the moderator suggested that in order to get a handle on problems that human beings have we needed to find a way to categorize our problems. Someone in the audience suggested something that she had read that may be helpful is that human life can be broken down into nine basic categories that when achieved will create a personally better life and a collectively better world. The discussion about these nine requirements lasted about an hour and everyone ultimately agreed that the most problematic problems any person has to deal with are directly related to these nine requirements. Determining how to eliminate our problems became more challenging.

The discussions in the auditorium continued on for a few hours with stories being told about how people we know have had to endure years of turmoil because they didn’t know how to resolve certain difficulties in their lives. We also heard how real life problems in one’s own family or in the community in which they live have negatively rippled their way into their own life and the lives of so many other people.

The other thing that we took away from these stories about personal problems was that every person needs someone to be there for them to inspire them to do better and to help them to quickly resolve a problematic situation. We heard about relatives and good friends stepping up and being there for one another when a person they care about has a problem that is so out of the ordinary that it weighs them down like an anchor on a ship. We heard about non-profit organizations which are formed to help people in their time of need. We heard about citizens in their town coming to the rescue when a disaster strikes a single family or when it engulfs the entire community.

As we were discussing how people have helped people in their time of need someone in the auditorium shouted out “that is our common purpose”. This quickly set off a discussion about how every parent and grandparent has the same purpose of helping their children and grandchildren have more insights into life so they can navigate their way through life’s difficulties in order to find happiness and enjoyment. We talked about how every employee or member of a company and organization has a common purpose to ensure a smooth and well functioning operation. We turned our attention to our own school where every student, faculty member and other school employees have the common purpose of helping every student to succeed while they attend this school.

It was getting late and while we did not come up with an all encompassing solution to what we can do to eliminate personal and societal problems we did come to one important breakthrough before ending the event, all of us have a common purpose of working together for a better future. Instead of acting as separate individuals and part of separate groups we could become united around the idea of working with our fellow human beings in the effort to make this a better world for everyone. We envisioned a time where humanity would be in sync with one another.

Thinking about the various discussions at this forum I now realize that life requires a solid foundation upon which we can build a better future for ourselves, the people we love and our fellow human beings. Believing that all of humanity has one common purpose of working together for a better future gives us the starting point for that better future.