This is a guest post written by Sam Davidson, a social entrepreneur who co-founded CoolPeopleCare, aiming to make caring easy & simple for everyone, 5 minutes at a time. I became a fan after reading the post “Making Your Passion Your Profession“. Since this blog is all about caring, I have invited Sam to share his vision of Why You Should Care.
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At CoolPeopleCare, we toss around the word ‘revolution’ a lot. We know it’s a loaded word. We know it’s threatening, historical, important, heavy – and perhaps to some – meaningless. But none of those pitfalls keep us from using it. Here’s why:
Change can happen in two major ways:
- When we want it to
- When we don’t want it to
How’s that for specifics? Put another way, people and things change either because they want to, or because they have to. Ask anyone in the helping professions: people usually change a behavior or habit, learn something new or take on a new lifestyle because they’ve chosen to do so, or because they have no other choice – they have to.
Therefore, revolutions either happen with you or to you. If you’re the peasants in 19th century France, you willfully storm the Bastille with baguettes and demand life and liberty. Or, if you’re the British in American colonies in the late 1700′s, you’re about to get hit with something pretty fierce.
Either way, a revolution is coming, and history will define you by what side you’re on.
Therefore, we believe it’s time for a caring revolution, one that we willfully choose to live and bring about some of the solutions to our world’s most pressing problems.
And we think that revolution will happen when enough people proactively opt to live a different lifestyle, one that’s more caring. And, we’ll do our best to make that choice easier by making it ‘cooler,’ so that way you can assimilate it into your lifestyle.
We’re not experts (or even history buffs) when it comes to revolutions, but we do recognize that revolutions happen when a movement becomes mainstream.
Here’s what we mean: a movement is a loose grouping of people who (covertly or openly) decide to live or act differently. Maybe it’s the small group of people who sell their cars and take the bus. Or maybe it’s those who ditch meat and buy all their food from local organic farms. It’s the group of voters who want someone new on the school board, or the small clan of do-gooders who decide to support local art, local music and local theater.
But soon, that movement becomes more. More and more people decide to make those same choices and a critical mass accumulates. And, very soon, the majority of a society is on board, and it’s no longer a movement. It’s gone mainstream and reached a tipping point. It’s a revolution.
The French and American revolutions happened when enough people decided to fight for change. The digital music revolution happened when enough people owned portable devices. And the caring revolution will happen when enough of us make caring for others, our communities and our planet a way of life.
It’s happening. The movement is growing. People are waking up and making different choices.
You can be part of this revolution by visiting our site or checking out our book (it comes with free music). Day by day, person by person, and choice by choice, we’ll make it happen.
