Holding on to Hope

I recently had an interesting discussion with a friend. We covered a lot of topics, amongst them racism, prejudice, problems of nationalism, the objectification of women, the pursuit of privileges without accepting responsibility, and struggles with attraction shadowing all the decisions we make.

He agreed, none of it is ideal, life would be better if these were not so, but argued that there is little we can do to change these things in the world at large. And perhaps he is right. Perhaps the most that those of us who want to change all of this can do is live our life the way we want the world to be, and teach our children how to do better if they so choose. Maybe it is simply the idealist in me yearning for utopia, but my heart aches to believe that there must be more I can do. There must be things I can say to someone to help them change their life for the better, to let go of shackles they had no idea they were clinging to. There must be ways to break down these systems that people buy into that do not serve them, but enslave them.