Sunday, May 4, 2014

Choosing It

There are moments we want to last forever, and moments we want to forget immediately after they occur. Each are emotional, each consuming.
And then there are moments which are both. So hard that we feel the urge to avoid or change the subject or make light… yet also so important that we become extra-present to focus in on every nuance. These are the ones which are the most important to capture. Yet maybe the trickiest.

As human beings, we avoid pain. It’s basic human instinct. It’s easy to avoid a topic, to instead focus forward, just not go there. Many do just that… maybe a whole generation… because it’s frankly much easier and way more pleasant that way. 

Everything about genocide and the Holocaust creates this conflicted tension. Most of us don’t seek it out, but listen uncomfortably when we’re told about it. We don’t want to think about the details, but once we hear a bit, want to understand exactly what, how and with what gruesome precision it happened. We want to block the images out, but they haunt us with a sense of importance. The more we understand it, the less we can understand it. 
And articulating it can feel daunting.

So here we are with a project to help you capture and hold onto the very thing we instinctively want to avoid thinking about? And we’re asking you to make a statement about this thing that’s full of conflicting senses and hard to express? Hmm. 

There’s a twist. 
We know that there’s a cycle with anything dark or painful. We can avoid it, we can hope it just never gets dark again… or we can move through it to bring in some light. We’ve created P6M out of our own commitment to bring light to the dark, and positively impact humanity with what we know.
Not to forget, but to learn from. 
Not to dwell in it, but to create something different out of it.
Not to live in the past, but to have the past live in us to inspire every choice we make.  

So… rather than avoiding or being overcome by it, choose now how to be changed by it.
With your awareness of the atrocities of genocide and Holocaust, what can you capture and harness for impact later?  
What do you want to remember? 
How do you want this awareness to influence the way you think, choose and interact? 
What do you want to commit to from this? What do you want to honor or remember? 

We know that our collective future will be shaped by the individual answers to those questions from each one of us. These are our statements.
That’s why we’ve created Project6Million, and why one of our favorite parts is where we send your statement back to you in intervals… in two weeks, in 6 months, in a year, in two years, with the same questions every time: “What does it stir in you now? What can it to spark or shape in your life now?” ...Just in time for wherever you'll be in your life, to make impact right there. 

We have no doubt that the collective, deliberate light of every one of us out of the darkness we understand.. will create a different world forward. 

Capture your statement before another minute passes… www.project6million.org


(And don’t worry- you can edit it any time.)