I have been criticized often for what people believe is a "pie in the sky" idealistic view that I have. There is no specific critique leveled against my views, but soem people seem to believe that I am naïve, or that I don't consider the realistic approach to a situation. There are people who will say that "you can't change the world" as if that is my last, dying goal to be accomplished, and say that there approach--considered "rational," "realistic," of the most suitable kind, is the truer and more mature way of going about things.
But I take issue not with the attacks on my realism, nor on the accusations of being naïve, but with the simple idea that idealism or optimism is somehow unrealistic. There are certainly strands of idealism that are unrealistic--that the world can live in complete peace regardless of ethnic, religious, or cultural diversity, for instance. But idealism, just as realism, comes in different flavors and stripes.
Is it unrealistic to imagine a world where community resources are pooled instead of divided up amongst competing factions? Is it unrealistic to believe that people from different educational, ethnic, religious, or otherwise backgrounds cannot get along? The answer to all of these is an emphatic "no." "In order to work, all people need not get along, communities may not smartly divide their resources, and all aspects need not work out. But practical idealism stands that there are some situations, with the right balance of idealism and practical efforts that combine to make an ideal situation a closer reality.
There are always realistic steps to an idealistic future.
These happen over time, and gradually we chip away at the suffering in our world. These are things that do not appear in cost-benefit analysis charts, or in data sets, or even in newspapers. But the fact is that over all of human time, we are hoping to just make things a little better, bit by bit.
In order to change the world, you need not change the entire world, but just one part. We all, in fact, change the world every day. We can choose to make it a better place, or not, and we can choose to make it a more peaceful place, or not.
I chose to be an AmeriCorps VISTA because I wanted my every day to be an experience about making the world just a bit better than the day before. Maybe the forces of prejudice, hatred, terrorism, and division had greater effect that day, but at least I, and the countless others who labor for good, have put in my effort against them.
I like to quote Bernard Baruch when he said "We cannot cast out pain from the world, but needless suffering we can." This is the essential element of practical idealism--a world not free from letdowns, frustrations, tensions, disagreements, and even sadness, but one that is not run by fear, greed, or injustice.
Some people may still insist that this view is naïve, and that my head is still in the clouds. Fine by me.
Because even though I may not be a world-shifting thinker, it was the dreamers that built our world. It was naïve to build skyscrapers. It was naïve to think we could fly. It was naïve to think that the United States could become a superpower at one point in time.
Naïvete today is tomorrow's hope. I hope, if anything, that my words inspire you to listen to the dreamers you know, because they may not be as misguided as you may think.
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