Gandhi is thought to have created that idea, although maybe it comes from one of his beloved texts.  (A writer skillfully straightens out the whole feel-good coffee mug aphorism industry here)

Whatever the source, or whoever coined the pithy bumper sticker, it is on a recycled nylon bag I have used dozens of times and also on the banner of my youtube channel (here) where you will find the opinion “nice work, if you can get it.”  “Be the change you want to see in the world” is a short phrase that encapsulates a lot about the work I need to be doing.

As the writer cited above wrote:   

The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

If we would like to see less violence in the world, and are constantly in fist fights because we react to insults with fists, teaching ourselves how not to throw the first punch is a big step in the right direction.  The world isn’t going to magically change from violent to more peaceful if we stop the preemptive face-bashing, but the change in ourselves is a necessary precondition for being able to convince anyone else to stop fighting.  Plus, the violence in our own life is likely to decrease as we change our behavior.

The default settings of life are what enable complex human societies to function in a more or less automatic way in a complicated and demanding system set to default.  But if you have a dream of doing something to influence and change the status quo, the default settings will not help you accomplish it.  If that dream involves doing your part to change the world in the direction you dream of, you are going to have to transform yourself into an effective role model for what you’re talking about.

As the eminent philosopher Moms Mabley postulated “if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.”  

I need to think no further than my father on his deathbed to reinforce for me the importance of being the change– becoming the kind of force you’d like to see in the world.   He died full of regrets, largely related to his fiercely held belief that people can’t change in any significant way.  “The world’s not black and white, Elie,” he told me with the great sorrow of a decades-too-late revelation, hours before he died.  “I think now how much richer my life would have been if I hadn’t seen it as a battle—good versus evil.”

Good versus Evil thinking simplifies the world in a reductive, and frankly, often stupid way.  Of course we can see the difference between good (helping someone in trouble) and evil (torturing someone in trouble) but that’s not the point I’m slogging toward.  Human motivation and behavior is famously complicated –suppose the person in trouble you’re helping or torturing is not a victim but a vicious person, a terrorist not a freedom fighter?– which is the greater good and the greater evil is a topic for endless debate.  

But, for example, if we are hurt every time we feel rejected, and never miss a chance to express that hurt, whether the rejection was actually intended or inadvertent (as much perceived rejection turns out to be), we are trapped in a syndrome caused, largely, by our own reaction.   If our goal is to create a classroom where kids learn to deal gracefully with failure and rejection, we have a good deal of work to do first on our own reactions to what feels like failure and rejection.

Otherwise, we will find ourselves building a lousy model, in a room with kids slugging away with bullies, fighting perceived rejecters on their behalf but teaching the children nothing about the proper way to respect yourself and your work and not be unduly put out by the negativity or silence of others.  The project will fail unless the teacher has first figured out how to keep negativity and fighting out of the space.   That work is on the teacher, if the teacher has a goal larger than imparting knowledge of a particular skill or subject.

That 99% of teachers, 99% of people, will not submit themselves to this difficult work, or have the kind of larger goal I give in the example, has nothing to do with it.  Most people work in default mode, protected by their rationales, encouraged by their successes and taking pleasure and pain where they find it.  This is the way of the world.  

I am talking specifically about those who wish to change the world.  It’s a job that demands upheaval.  The person who would attempt it has some hard work to do before they can even think about being the change they want to see in the world.

That’s all I’m saying.