What I am thinking about at this moment is what participation actually looks like today. How important is it that people engage—not loudly, not publicly, but simply by being present.
I am elderly now, and very focused on my computer. Because of that, I didn’t see what was really going on around me, nor did I realize how much my participation was wanted.
Yesterday was my great-granddaughter’s birthday. There was a scavenger hunt for presents, and instead of joining in, I was sitting at my computer, observing but not really knowing what was happening. I wasn’t absent, but I wasn’t there either.
This is a common way people live now. We watch. We stay in our own boxes. We assume observation is enough.
But I have decided to change my habits. I want to participate, even if I never say anything at all. As long as I am with them—watching, noticing, paying attention—I make a difference.
That kind of presence matters.
This is what we need today: people who are involved enough to notice what is happening. If I had known the need in that moment, I would have made the effort to participate. I would have been there.
Now I understand how easily the world changes when everyone stays in their own corner and never reaches out. That is how things happen without anyone meaning for them to happen.
My grandmother once told me that if people in Austria in the late 1890s had paid attention and risen up earlier, history might have turned out differently. There were people fighting to keep things as they were, and many who believed change was necessary. But most did not pay close attention to the kind of change that was coming.
The opposition grew not because it was stronger at first, but because enough people were not paying attention early enough.
I can relate to others without everything being about me. What I noticed in myself was small, almost insignificant—but failing to notice on a larger scale carries much greater consequences.
By the time the danger is obvious, participation is no longer a choice.
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