Subject:
About Socks and Idealism - An
invitation from Idealist.org
From:
Ami.Dar
About
Socks and Idealism
Dear Bircan,
Would you share your socks? Let
me explain.
Last month, at http://www.idealist.org/imagine , we invited everyone
on Idealist to imagine a better
world and to hel p build it together.
The response was overwhelming. People in 70 countries organized
300 start-up meetings in less
than three weeks, and more meetings
are planned for the weeks of March
12-18 and April 23-29, at http://www.idealist.org/meetings
After seeing some photos from
these meetings - at http://www.flickr.com/photos/idealist
- I thought this might be a good
moment to tell you about an experience
I had when I was 19. This led
me to start Idealist.org, and
it's still the best way I've found
for expressing this whole idea.
I was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Peru and Mexico. At 18,
I was drafted into the Israeli
army for three years.
I was stationed on the Syrian border, where every day I had to
spend hours on a watchtower, looking
through a telescope at the soldiers
on the other side, who, in turn,
spent their day watching us watching
them...
On weekends the Syrian soldiers got some time off, and one afternoon
they played soccer for a while.
Watching them play made me see
them as I never had before, and
sparked a thought that seemed
so crazy it made me laugh out
loud, and yet it's stayed with
me ever since.
That week it had been raining hard, we had been soaked for days,
and I had been thinking about
how in my unit, and in every other
unit I knew, there were "good
guys" who I could trust with
my life, and who would give me
their last pair of dry socks if
I ever needed them, and some other
guys who would not.
As I was thinking about this, and watching my "enemies"
play across the barbed wire, it
suddenly occurred to me that the
same must be true on the other
side - that in any Syrian unit
I would probably find people I
could immediately trust, if only
I had the opportunity.
This should have been obvious, but when you live in a place that•s
een involved in a conflict for
a long time, the "others"
are often so dehumanized you rarely
think of them as people just like
yourself.
But as soon as that thought hit me, everything changed. I looked
across the border, and I thought:
"Wait a second, this is all
wrong. This fence is running the
wrong way.
Wouldn't it make more sense for those who share socks, on both
sides of the border, to get together...?"
And that•s when I laughed
out loud.
Life is a bit more complicated, of course, but the desire to reach
across the border - any border
- never left me, and later it
led to Action Without Borders
and Idealist.org.
I believe we are living in a very special moment. For the first
time in history, we have the means
to reach across every boundary
and difference that separates
us, and find new ways of working
together.
We can do this, and we can do it now. Please share this message
with anyone who would give you
their last pair of socks (or to
whom you'd give yours) and invite
them to join us at Idealist.org.
Together we can build a global
network of people who want to
make our communities and the world
a better place, starting right
now from our neighborhood, school,
or workplace.
During the week of March 12-18, and again during the week of April
23- 29, people all over the world
will be meeting face-to-face to
continue building this network,
and it would be great if you could
attend a start-up meeting wherever
you are.
To find or host a meeting in your area, and for more details about
this whole initiative, please
go to http://www.idealist.org/meetings
Thanks so much for reading and
sharing this message. We look
forward to working with you and
seeing what we can all do together.
If you want to reply to this message, feel free to do so. We can't
always write back, but we read
everything we receive.
All the best,
Ami Dar and the Idealist.org team
http://www.idealist.org/
