Waiting on the world to change

Last June, I was asked to give the charge to the graduating seniors at my church. For what it’s worth, here’s what I said.

Let me start by saying I like John Mayer. I’m not a huge fan, couldn’t name you all his songs, but some of them stick out for me, particularly Daughters, since I have a daughter and his message about how fathers should treat their daughters is a good one.

Now, if only he would write a song about how daughters should treat their fathers!

Mayer has a new CD called Continuum. Some of you may have heard it, or bought it — more likely, you’ve downloaded it. On that CD is a song called Waiting on the World to Change. And as much as I like John Mayer, I have trouble with that song. He says in the song that:

Me and my friends, we’re all misunderstood,

They say we stand for nothing and there’s no way we ever could

Now we see everything that’s going wrong

With the world and those who lead it

We just feel like we don’t have the means

To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting

Waiting on the world to change,

We keep on waiting

Waiting on the world to change.

In fairness to John Mayer, many of us keep waiting for the world to change. We see problems, and we feel small. We feel powerless, like little cogs in a big machine. We see war and feel like the hatred and misunderstandings that cause it are too complicated to fix. We see poverty and disease and feel like even the experts don’t have a clue about what to do. We see troubles at home and abroad and they seem overwhelming.

What we must remember is that the world does change. Usually because someone didn’t wait, but got actively involved.

Mabel Monteith

I can’t imagine what my grandmother, Mabel Bell Monteith, would say about the world in 2008. She was born in 1900. But in her 84 years, she saw the results of people who did not wait for the world to change, but who did their part — their little cog part — to change the world.

She was one of them.

In the 1950s, Grandma helped distribute polio vaccines in the inner city at a time when polio was crippling thousands of children all over the country. In the 1960s she was active in the Urban League, when most white people weren’t. That was a time of great racial strife in America, when attack dogs were unleashed on civil rights marchers and race riots broke out in large cities. Grandma had her prejudices, like all of us do, but she — in her little cog way — worked to make sure black people in Elkhart, Indiana, had a fair chance.

She befriended her next-door neighbor, a Turkish woman who had married an American and come to this country knowing very little English and even less about American culture. My grandma was a devout Christian; Sevim was a Muslim. Yet Grandma always treated her friend with love and respect.

She helped Sevim learn the ropes of living in America, helped with the babies when her children were born, and even traveled with her friend to Turkey to visit family back home. Sevim’s husband later divorced her for another woman, and Grandma did her best to make sure she and the kids had what they needed.

Mostly, they needed a friend.

Grandma didn’t look at polio or racial problems or religious and cultural differences as too big for one person. She never waited for the world to change — she changed it, in her own way, little by little.

My parents were both teachers. My father taught music, starting out in the little town where I was born, Rockport, Indiana. My mother began in a one-room school in Kentucky, even before she had her college degree. Both moved to other schools in other towns. But I know they changed the world, because their students from time to time will contact them and thank them for what they learned.

Both of them turned 80 in the last year, and they are still trying to make a difference. There is a woman in their church who never made it through grade school. This woman works in a nursing home, but can’t progress in her job without college credit. The problem is, she can hardly read, or do the simple math problems that she needs to make the first big steps toward college placement.

Mom is teaching her fourth-grade math. Dad is teaching her to read, helping her sound out long words by looking for the consonants that start each syllable. If you asked my parents whether they are changing the world, they would laugh. But I believe that is the only way to change the world. One person at a time.

To change the world, we have to give ourselves more credit than we sometimes do. Life is hard, and the tough times can discourage us, make us doubt our own capabilities. When you doubt your own capabilities, just remember that you need no special tools or training. You have everything you need to change the world, one person at a time.

I started with a musical reference, so let me close with another. The band Five for Fighting asks in the song World

What kind of world do you want?

Think anything . . .

Let’s start at the start

Build a masterpiece

Be careful what you wish for

History starts now.

And so I ask, what kind of world do YOU want? Whatever it is, start at the start. Don’t keep waiting on the world to change. Go build a masterpiece.

History starts now.