Have you ever held back from sharing something knowing it may lead to misinterpretation or misuse?
This is the piece I seem to struggle with at times when writing. As you should believe, I pray always that my messages come back in peace, promoting inspiration, motivation, if not, just connectivity and relativity to ease one’s soul.
My reflective thoughts are guided by necessitating myself the desire to vulnerably share.
Whether one or many, I get this sense that someone out there needed my very words to strengthen them, heal them or redirect them back into light.
I recently have read a few articles of Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, otherwise known to us all as, www. My reason for following up on him after so many years since he began this global gateway back in 1989 is due to a statement he made that rests well with my understanding.
His drive for all of us to use what he has created responsibly rings such a similarity with many creators I have brushed upon.
While www primarily was created for communication between scientists, now, as we all can attest, its array has gone into countless directions. It is not surprising to me that, to my updated discovery, he spearheads the World Wide Web Foundation and Inrupt, from what I succinctly gather is ascertaining how to responsibly handle data.
I think back to learning about gun powder- we know where these have led to today. How about the understanding of stars and cosmic forces in the physics world where given the lead as the “father”, Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb came to be?
Still today, upon reading the book, Hiroshima, by Hersey, back during my senior year in high school, the part where people ran to the waters to free themselves from the atrocities of the burning heat from what had just been dropped on them; to recall someone reaching out into the waters to help one out only for the skin to fall off like gloves. I can still feel and even smell that part.
In school, we teach the simple guidelines of understanding the scopes of how to be Respectful, Safe, and Responsible. I truly am thankful for these community guidelines. Planting goodness sprouts goodness which produces an environment of goodness. That doesn’t even have to be science. Isn’t that purely common sense?
Kindness is not weakness. Kindness is goodness. Goodness produces strength for communities.
What is community, however, and who is in it? For those out, should we not focus to understand why?
I look at my students, former and new, traversing from one class to another and think, ‘Do THEY know why?’
I try and try each time in class to praise, promote, while protect the hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits of children, but here is what I run into:
Not all minds think alike.
Not all want the same.
Not all want to put in the same effort.
Not all care.
I could sit here and write components to each of those statements, but something drives me instead to leave each statement alone for all of us to ponder upon and just immerse ourselves with the follow-up question to each with a “Why?”
In the eyes of my own children and my students, I have come to embrace and thus, accept, we all are creatures of our own make-up. I could crack a joke, but find my very own students and at times, my very own children, confused at my humor. The essential need to just laugh casts even slight confusion.
As simple as a joke, what is funny to me may not be funny to all.
Admittedly, even with our own children, we have come to arrive that in time, each question the worth of the why.
Hence, the difference in each of us divides us from the beginning of times. So, I ask, how do we come together as one if we should, and must say, have suggested, to work as one?
When a City Council member stopped by to talk to our neighborhood during a BBQ, a powerful drive for community volunteerism was presented. This member shows not just passion, but pro-action for his community, strengths that should be appreciated in any leader.
The eyes of this council member held confusion when I voiced the importance and need to protect those openly volunteering to keep our communities safe. I take it this growing suburban community has yet to under that not everyone is for the greater good.
I already know that those who withhold the same passion and pro-action mentalities are already quietly helping in their own way without the need to openly broadcast or open themselves to the public eye. This knowing goes back to what I have witnessed in children.
Not all minds think alike.
Not all want the same.
Not all want to put in the same effort.
Not all care.
The good do good acts because they simply and automatically are good. There can be some taught by example who struggled at first to know which direction to lean. Still, the good lead in goodness. Involuntary actions essentially are the secrecy of goodness.
In college, my friend, Christine, took note of the asphalt roads always needing work. My take on this brief discussion was job security- roads needing work provide work for workers who can fix them.
While she admitted she had never thought of it that way, I would like to think economically, to her defense, she had never been on the end of such need. (She and her husband-to-be were blessedly building a home on land she was given.)
As artificial intelligence gets closer to the superhuman phase, think how many people will need to evolve to higher learning and skills, however, to be able to compete.
I frequently think about Sir Isaac Newton who I read suggested after seeing the pyramids in Egypt that we are all innovators- not inventors. How could we suggest we invent when such complexities already exists? I deeply took this very thought-provoking and quite humbling notion to heart.
I patiently am pushing through patents that only have come to fruition due to my desire to make something that already exists better.
Sir Isaac Newton makes a profounding point. Essentially, we are just building from each other’s great minds as Oppenheimer must have been seen gathered with many highly intellectual physicists to come up with such an irreversible discovery.
Much like Tim Berner’s-Lee or Wei Boyang, fathers of their own discoveries that have since dramatically changed the world, we volunteer not just our bodies, but our minds, to help the world.
There are those of us birthing discoveries we initially created to create renowned goodness for those around us. How is it that all of a sudden, what was meant to be good transforms into things not so good at all?
Writing and journalizing has been a part of me before YouTube or blogging platforms even existed. I get the feeling and desire to help in any way to spread goodness around. I get the desire to help make this world a more efficient and efficacious establishment.
Just like Berners-Lee saw the beauty of connections via web during the pandemic, I was compelled to reach out to those who I envisioned at home in need of some inspiration or motivation through my workouts, blogs, and vlogs- quickly pushing through my own discomfort.
Still, to no fault beyond innocence, while I am touched by the growing respect and care I see between students of all backgrounds, I cannot ignore the existential presence of light and darkness. Volunteer? I strongly agree. I’m already in. What for those who don’t or won’t?
Not all minds think alike.
Not all want the same.
Not all want to put in the same effort.
Not all care.
The only sure thing I personally have is, as I heard David Goggins to remark, when he faces God and is given a paper of all these remarkable things he has done, like David, “I want God to be impressed with how I turn out.”
At the end of the day, what we make of ourselves, what we have innovated to help the world, should hold no weight for what the world does with it. All components created stay good until used wrongly.
What I write, what I speak, what I do will be changed by this world to cater to their perception and needs.
Respectful, Safe, and Responsible. That’s my inner control. I volunteer me with passion and pro-action. Maybe I’ll inspire. Maybe I’ll motivate. Maybe I’ll just entertain. Regardless, I need to do what I do because I want to do more than what I was called to do.
Ironically, the “father of the atomic bomb” was revoked of his security clearance. He, along with other renowned scientists emphasized on the importance of responsibly handling scientific inventions.
Now, in the zeitgeist of times, deemed as the “Godfather of AI”, I wonder what thoughts would Geoffrey Hinton share with Oppenheimer, Einstein, and all others sharing the same concern for where science is heading.
While not all of us are scientists, in the manner of terms, are we not all in power of creating something to become malignant that was fundamentally benign?
Where David Goggins meets scientists to me is under the same line where I see all my children and students.
We can all only hope for good. While we may not all think alike, want the same, want to put in the same effort, and care the same, the good deeds must continue to promote and continue goodness.
To be respectful, safe, and responsible has been planted for so long. While we will keep planting, the hope is one day, there will be no weeds to pull out. Yes?
