If I make the world a better place for you, I have in turn made it a better place for me. But if I am so selfish that I take it upon myself to reverse the order of that process, I might have reversed the outcome for you, but I will have destroyed the world for me.

Pain dutifully reminds me that the world is terribly imperfect, but it faithfully helps me appreciate the world on those days when it’s a little closer to being perfect.

It’s not about changing the world, although that’s what we seem to rally around. Rather, it’s about changing ourselves for that is the seed from which changing the world sprouts.

If I can draw the slightest smile across a single face obliterated by pain, in that act I will have begun to understand the power of an ordinary human being to perform the seemingly impossible in the life of another human being. And how can that experience do anything less than drive me to try and make the world smile.

I sit leaned over praying in some state of darkening desperation asking God what He would have me do to get up and change a world gone wild. And He says, it is in the moments of prayer that you heal the wildness of the world. So it’s not about getting up as much as it is about sitting down.

Change begins with ‘one person’ who so inspires others that they themselves can do nothing other than change. And no matter the dismal state of the world or the gravity of the situation, don’t ever think for a moment that that ‘one person’ is not you.

If I’m pretending I’m either attempting to expand the scope of my world through the magic of my imagination, or I’m attempting to flee the whole of it because of the depth of my fear.

I will never know the extent to which I can change the world until I change my attitude about my ability to change the world.

There’s plenty of things that are wrong in our world, and we can give them free reign to completely define our view of the world. Or we can focus on the fact that what’s wrong with the world are the essential raw materials from which a person of determination crafts everything which is right.