The Times Are Changing

Dear all,
I am so, so happy to be with you again, I hope you know how grateful I feel about have seen all you again in Widya Mandala, the Campus, the English Department, lecturers, students, and friends in Surabaya…such a warm in my heart I feel when I think about you, your potential, kindness and all the teaching I get from you every time I look at you facing life.

I got so emotional the other day when I heard about the bombs in the city…as it is a place that I have come to love for different reasons and I am afraid radicalism take over the beautiful heart of the people there, destroying everything you have achieved in the last years, respect, open mindedness, internationality, rights, growing, your own development within your culture and overall, more opportunities in education and equality of beliefs… let’s just say Pancasila.

I see in this “terror” that we need to reflect about the meaning of connivance nowadays, to those that are most prosecuted in the world, those that are detested, considered less than humans, the last category of beings, even worse than the “untouchables” in some parts of India…I refer to The Minorities, wherever they are in the world. And all that hate and rejection comes mostly from fear.

And always… ¡Fear is the biggest enemy of happiness! I believe that If we lose the fear to stay glued to outdated beliefs and open to change with sense, there is no obstacle to love everyone and understand that the aggressive ones are simply sick people, like those inside the hospital; as nobody is completely right, and definitely no one is empowered to posse and impose a single truth for all human beings about anything, that will only create unnecessary conflict; we need to understand, respect and live with oneness, and probably those that are sick, are those that need more help and attention.
We do not understand that to try to impose our beliefs by force and hurting during our life time is like feeding a snake that tries to suffocate us. As we all have inside the seed of love, but also the seed of sickness.

So let’s stop, let’s smell the flowers, there are a lot of great people around that try to make of the world a better place instead of destroy it and engulf it with pain and fire.

For happy and strong-minded people, the risks associated to tend the hand to those that need it more are nothing. As, at the end of the end of the day, no one can hurts us inside if we believe in ourselves, live with passion and with a good purpose.

 

Domingo Enrique Grande