What Is My Activism Really About? to Love, Serve and Remember

I have made a promise to this world that I will carry with me to my last days. It is my vow to lessen the suffering of the world while I am here - it is to ensure that every toxic legacy that I inherited from our culture ends with me - and, ideally, ends with all of us, in our lifetime. The task may be impossible, but I have to help. I have to do it because my true nature wants me to. When I do this work, my heart sings. My inner self rejoices. That is because your happiness is my happiness. Doing the work connects me with what is really true. We are all connected. We are all in relationship.
By Tim Hjersted / filmsforaction.org
Aug 16, 2016
5
What Is My Activism Really About? to Love, Serve and Remember

Focusing on media activism, it is quite easy to get swept up in promoting a thousand different messages, leaving me sometimes feeling like I've gotten off track with my core message and purpose.

What am I doing here? Why am I here?

The answer is in an old Sufi song I learned as a child, "What are we here for? To love, serve and remember."

To love, serve and remember.

Remember what?

That we are all family.

That you are because I am.

That what is sacred in me is sacred in you. And that sacredness pervades the cosmos, if we choose.*

Reverence and awe for the world is our choice to make. We can see that beauty, and live that life, or we can choose not to see it, and live without that beauty.

Look at your lover this way today. See the sacred in her. See the sacred in him. When you see it in them, see it in your family and your friends. Then, start looking for it in people you see at the grocery store and on the street. Then see it in all of the animal creatures in your life. See it in the trees and plants that grow outside your house. See life in everything, truly be present to its nature and vibrational energy.

Each person in the world is family - caught with us amid the "splendour and travail of the earth."

When we see the sacred in every person, we can see that those who cause others to suffer are also suffering and have been deeply wounded by this culture since they were born. Every child is born with love in their hearts. The child does not know that we are not all family until they are taught so. This is how we forget.

Our culture teaches us to forget. Our culture teaches us who to love and who not to love. It is a very small circle of people. But that circle is growing bigger for more and more people each day.

More and more people are remembering that our family is life itself.

That is the core message I am trying to spread with my activism.

From this revolution of the heart flowers every other revolution. Sexism, racism, environmental destruction, poverty and war are not possible when true love is there. True love dissolves illusion. True love shatters prejudice and malice. True love liberates both the child and the adult from centuries of our inherited suffering. It is the revolution we need most desperately to save every 5 year old child from the suffering they will inherit if we do not vow to ensure that every toxic cultural legacy of our culture ends with us.

 


 

*I define sacred as something having intrinsic worth and value, so for me the word connects with me on both a secular and spiritual level. In a scientific sense that value may be entirely subjective, but I'm okay with that. For me, it's a choice to see the sacred in life. I can choose to see that beauty, or not see it.

Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action.

Trending Videos
CIA Stories: The Jakarta Method (2023)
68 min - Abby Martin speaks with journalist Vincent Bevins about the hidden CIA mass murder in Indonesia, which created the model for US extermination campaigns against socialists and accused leftists in...
Remembering That Life Is Good
14 min - As humans, we are always trying to control everything. We think we have the ability to change anything that crosses our path and believe we have the capability to handle it to our perfect...
Briahna Joy Gray Examines the Role of Race and Authoritarianism in Police Violence
19 min - Every minute of this is fantastic commentary, from CRT in schools, to why police violence should be framed more often as authoritarian, to the censorship and school defunding campaign being led by...
Plutocracy: Political Repression In The U.S.A. (2019)
560 min - Plutocracy, by filmmaker Scott Noble, is the first documentary series to comprehensively examine early American history through the lens of class. Support the filmmaker's next film with a monthly...
Solidarity Theory
Deep Reads - Get Cozy and Dig in
Bull$h!t Jobs | David Graeber
Recommended

Films For Action hosts a subscription service that currently offers 55 highly-curated, solutions-oriented films to Patron subscribers donating $5 per month. 

Subscribe here. Your support helps grow our 5000+ video library, which is 99% free and contains no ads thanks to our patrons.

Cancel any time via your settings page.

 

How to Use and Contribute to this Library

  • Use the Explore menu to filter content by type and topic. Selections stack, so you can view Film Types about Specific Topics.

  • Submit videos directly to our library! Just sign up and click +Add Video at the top of the site and paste the video URL to get started. 

  • Create an account to save videos and articles for later and rate content for others

  • Filmmakers: Interested in our TVOD or SVOD services? Films For Action is one of the best homes for paradigm-shifting documentaries.

  • Contact us if you have a site or film suggestion, question, want to volunteer, or you're a filmmaker looking to collaborate. 

    Let's be the media!