30 Days of Nonviolence
Because it can take time to address root causes of violence or injustice, people seeking speedy objectives often reject nonviolence on the grounds that it doesn’t “work.” They often embrace violence to satisfy an immediate need. But all action has consequences on various levels, and ignoring the long-term, adverse consequences of violence leads to lurching from crisis to crisis rather than steady improvement. One can characterize this dynamic as follows:
Violence sometimes “works” but never works, while nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works.
("Work" in quotation marks means "getting what you want in the short term", while work (without quotation marks) is about making the situation or less violent, more humane.)
1. Go deeper: Watch this short video on "work" vs. work. (This video is from Michael discussing his book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future.)
2. Practice: Take a few minutes to contemplate where negative thinking or speaking patterns show up in your life and relationships. Then, spend some time reflecting on the origin or source of this negative pattern. What influenced it? How does it make you feel? What impact does it have?