The invitation of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum written by Lorenzo Colombo
To establish a real, true, deep connection we need to use our heart. It might be with our fellow man, with our surroundings or with the invisible world.
To be able to reside in our heart we need to slow down the mind thinking process. When that happens we progressively reduce the grasp that fear has on us until we become free from it. Fear of loosing what we have, of not being considered, of being left behind. Fear of not being able to choose for yourself, to loose your freedom and your fundamental rights. In any other state of consciousness we are asleep, confused and easily deceived, but when we are finally free from fear we find ourselves in a place where we make the right decisions, we find our true north, we understand what really matters.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was created with this intention, and can be fully understood only when we sit in that place. But as long as we stay in our head and give our mind the power to wander unleashed we find ourselves bogged in endless debates. We REACT to stimuli, and in doing so we allow the fight or flight mode to kick in and our thoughts to be in control. We therefore fall from that place in our heart, and we become slave of that reaction creating a landslide we are not able to stop.
There is another way. If we made ourselves consciously used to acting instead of reacting, we could create a better outcome every time we get challenged. Think about someone insulting you and you calmly thinking that what comes out from that mouth is the result of the pain they are in, it’s not them. It’s not impossible, it’s just a matter of practice. Not only you could address the topic in a more objective way, but you could also show that person that changing the narrative is possible. They are not bad people, they are just having a bad day. Or a bad month. Or maybe they just chose the wrong company.
Every challenge contains an invitation to better ourselves. We might just take it as something that brings strain and stress in our lives and we want to overcome in order for it to disappear. Or we can consider it as an opportunity to come together, help each other, learn how to ask for support and how to give it.
That’s the big lesson that we shockingly missed from two years of pandemic, we turned on each other because we were scared. We didn’t learn the lesson and therefore, as often happens in life, we are confronted with another potentially dividing topic.
An effort from every single one of us is what we most desperately need. If we really want to leave our children a better place, we have to start paving the road that takes us to reconciliation. We need to offer a hand instead of turning our back.