The Change-Making Manifesto
What is Change-Making all about?
Change-Making is passionately creating positive change. It’s an onging and forever project, because there is simply so much that needs repair and nurturing. That means there’s an element of long-term commitment. But then, what else better to do with our lifetimes?
Change-Making is far too big to do on our own. Thus it is predicated on trust. Trust that if you take a deep-breath leap, others will see you and follow. Trust that there are millions and millions of other change-makers out there, most of whom we will never know or hear about, who also are passionately creating positive change.
Change-Making is positive change. It’s not change-for-change’s sake; rather it has a very specific direction. It means taking a look at the problems the world is facing and trying to put in place solutions that will make things better. In that, Change-Making does include a healthy dose of intolerance for the broken status quo. It means having the audacity to do things differently than other people.
Change-Making is courageous. It means digging deep and finding the strength to learn about the problems, so that we know what we are solving, so that we have the knowledge to judge whether a particular proposal really will help or whether it’s just treading water. It means taking the deep breath and plunging forward, even when the path runs contrary to some of our natural tendencies.
Change-Making is proactive. We aren’t armchair philosophers. Change-Making is about creating tangible, physical changes. And it’s about creating intangible, pholosophic, world-view shifts. Changing minds is perhaps the hardest work of all.
Change-Making is D-I-Y and grassroots. Rather than foisting the problems off onto future generations, or waiting for government to fix it, Change-Making is taking matters into our own hands. It means banding together wiht our local neighbors and “just doing stuff.” It means learning new skills, sharing with each other, and creating more art and beauty. At its best it is community-rallying and joyful and infectious.
Change-Making is connective. Granted, the communications efforts do demand quite a bit of chair-sitting, emails, and organizational meetings. But the doing of it is hands joined over a project, neighbors doing stuff together, new networks between organizations and businesses, shared joy at what we’re creating together.
Change-Makers believe that change is possible, that society really does have some volition about its general direction — and that direction can be shifted. As such, being a Change-Maker means actively cultivating that forefront, the cutting edge of forward progress. In real time you may get labeled a “weirdo,” but decades later in the history books, maybe just maybe, you might be referred to among the leaders.
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