Everybody has the power to change the world… together. But extremely few have the will to do it. The will has to be motivated and educated and that takes time and requires good teachers. Most of us don’t really think that anything we will do, will actually make a difference. And we are all right. Because in the real world, it takes all of us and all our will to make a change. And this change will most likely not influence us, but the generation to come. Which means that there are no quick benefits. So, you need to love and trust humanity, in order to fight for its future. But how can you do that when the last 30 years have been a mess and the last 100 a disgrace? It is impossible to put this past facts behind. For many, the faith in human kind is just gone…
Well… at least until you go to cities like Jonköping and you get to see initiatives like PRESENT. Basically, this initiative is a sort of exhibition where young people, between 16 and 22 years old, are presenting their optimistic view of the future. What would you do if you’d have the power to change things? And most important, after doing that, what do you think the actual result will be?
Most of the world cares more about material things and less about the actual future. We do what we do, but we don’t really care how it will influence our future generations. I mean who cares, we die anyway! Fortunately, these young people from Sweden seem to be really interested in making the lives of the future generations better. What they do show us is that we are all wired to think altruistic in the beginning, but from some reasons, good or bad, we choose to become much more interested in our own little insignificant lives and we choose to ignore the rest of the world completely, pretending that it is not our problem.
But, we can all change. The sooner, the better. I can say that this is one of the many, many reasons I love Sweden. It is a window in the future of the world and it gives you hope. PRESENT remind me why I still believe in the humanity. Because someday all the young people around the planet will think and act the same, ultimately changing the world. And we better believe it and offer them a little bit more trust, because they need it and they earned it.