How to save the world

I’m sitting on the train, the summer landscape flickers past the window, and I’m thinking about how our life REALLY is.

In my hand I hold photos of my parents in their early childhood and some shots from when they were teenagers. I see myself in them, I see my brother and sister, I see the similarities in the looks, the way they hold themselves. 

Different fashion, different times, the photos are black and white, but…

Were they THAT different from us?

Once upon a time, I thought life happened in circles. That people in life work on the same problems over and over again. The hamster wheel. 

Money, work, arguments, conflicts with loved ones, tears and then love, laughter and hugs. 

Perhaps rightly, it felt like a marathon run in the hamster wheel with no end in sight.

When I began to delve into personal development, I came to understand that the circles, cycles and recurring themes do not mean stagnation, stuckness or failure. 

They can be a spiral upwards. If a theme that’s been revisited hundreds of times has reappeared, it doesn’t mean I’ve failed. It’s because I’ve taken my life, relationships or goals to a new level. What an honor! 

If it’s a new level I can be proud of myself… that I had done some work, made some progress, resolved one level of issues… Good job Katarina, well done! Come on, this means you are gonna make the next level too

Today I am looking back at all that effort and I feel somewhere inside me, that I wasn’t exactly right about that either. This work on unblocking programs, healing lineages, clearing the earth, distance meditations… it’s another hamster wheel too. Just packaged up and called another name that’s more noble… “spiritual work”.

All that work to save the world, to save our loved ones from their own pains and patterns. Helping, healing, wishing people were different, praying for their change. 

But in reality there’s a big NO to that and life teaches me this over and over again. 

Life says “It’s not going to be like that, it’s going to be like this.”

And we resist and think “I’ll cure them. I will change it. I’ll make it happen”. 

Am I saying we should stop working on ourselves? Healing? Meditating? Learning?

 No, that’s not what I’m saying. 

None of that “saving the world,” has ultimately brought me what I had hoped for in the long run. 

What was I missing? 

Peace and reconciliation with myself. 

Why? Because I wasn’t doing it for myself… but for them, the women of the world, the planet.

Today I sit here on the train, with many more wrinkles on my forehead than when I first opened the gates to my growth… and I carry these pictures of my parents in my bag, when they were kids. I look at them and understand that I can’t really do anything for them. Only they can do that themselves.

We are responsible for ourselves.

The only direction I can move these circles is into myself. Where I embrace Katarina, the child who stole a lollipop from a store, the one who had a one-night stand as a teenager, and the one who has smacked her own children on the ass. 

I hug her and lovingly tell her “you are who you are”.

 And I hug that three-year-old mom and five-year-old dad in the photos and tell them – “that’s how you are, and I’m made of you.” Nothing needs to be tweaked, edited or changed. Because only there, deep down, can we do the most magical healing – forgive ourselves, accept ourselves, no longer be angry at ourselves or blame ourselves for what we have done, not done, said and not said.

To breathe a sigh of relief: this, deep down, is who I am and who I am allowed to be. 

And with that, I will save the world.