The Train Series 2: Change

First published on August 18, 2016

At the station I get on my train into London (maybe all these posts will be about trains) there are a load of signs that proudly proclaim it 'Britain's busiest railway station'.

Firstly, as a friend of mine pointed out, this is a strange thing to advertise. 'Mmmmmm, a really busy railway station, can't wait to go there!' said no one. Ever.

But it also feels true, and pretty amazing, especially when surrounded by the incredible flow of commuters into London on a week day, who then diffuse off the station into the flow at Waterloo before slipping into the tube, the buses, and the rivers of people who cross one bridge or another, walk down one pathway or another. I saw a talk (TEDx, I think), where the speaker pointed to how life has gradually become more complex and connected. From single celled organisms, through more complex ones, to different species and ecologies. With that in mind, and on this train journey, I didn't need the speaker's diagram to show the complex, connected system that the world now is. It's as clear in London's public transport as it is in his picture of the earth lit up by the connected cities and towns of the human race.

It makes me wonder, how does change happen? How can anyone or anything influence such a flow of people, such a complex, connected organism as the planet and all the people on it? Especially as each week more and more people are connected even more closely by the wonder of the Internet.

And of course I don't know.

But I'm reading Brené Brown's Rising Strong at the moment (I'd be reading it on the train if I wasn't writing this), and there is a truly amazing chapter about her discovering the idea of living from the assumption that everyone is doing their best.

And when thinking about how change happens, as part of this amazing and incredibly complex system, I can't help but think - in my attempt to live more from that assumption, for the generosity it promotes in me, and the judgment it removes - that change is just what happens when there are seven billion people trying to do their best. For themselves, their families, and the world at large.