So you know how Gandhi said “Be the change you wish to see in the world?” Or maybe that wasn’t him which you can read about here. But the point is someone, somewhere, seems to have said something like that and now you have to wonder: is that such a good idea?

Well sometimes you don’t really want to change, and you want the world to change, so this quote seems more accusatory than motivational. Like you’re being called out on being lazy because you don’t want to change something that’s wrong, but you still want other people to do it. Still, isn’t that kind of the point?

Because sometimes you’ve spent a lot of your time trying to conform to society’s expectations and assuming there’s something wrong with you because you’re “different” somehow, potentially including being impermissibly miserable. And at the end of it all, people considered that a fair thing to do, is call you out on your behavior. So why not turn it around on other people?

Make other people change in a way that makes you more capable of getting on with your life. Make them understand you and why you may or may not appreciate their intervening in your affairs. Expect other people to change, and in the process that will change the world, because you shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of being perfect and not hypocritical. Hypocrisy is a privilege and even if it is confusing and not the ideal for structuring a society, there are plenty of people living that way so you shouldn’t be required to have perfect standards.

Now how do you impact other people so that you don’t have to do the changing? Maybe that will require some communication and that definitely sucks. Still, if you can seek out the understanding of other people, you can be rewarded by adapted expectations. And sometimes people will even reform their behavior because they didn’t realize they were having such a detrimental impact. You can change the world, even if you stay the same. Sometimes you are the philosophical bulwark that other’s can morph their global understanding to include.

So you don’t really have to change to impact the world. It’s an interesting idea, but it puts too much emphasis on fitting into what other people are doing or at least expecting. Think it through, and make your decisions with care for the consequences, and then you can steer others to support your cause. Which is hopefully just and all.