John Mayer is a great musician. A musician who’s wrong about changing the world. He’s completely missed the point to changing the world. One of the favorite songs from him is a song I don’t agree with. His song, “Waiting For The World To Change” is a philosophy no one should live by.
I love the song. Great tune. Great piece of music, but terrible motto.
Waiting on the world to change is not going to change the world in any positive way. Here’s why waiting on the world to change will never work:
Why You Shouldn’t Wait
“Waiting on the world to change to” is placing the responsibility of changing the world on someone else. This means you have no control over what kind of change they bring about. Allowing someone else to change the world means you give them power to define the world you live in.
Apathy and indifference when it comes to changing the world means we will be forced to live in world we may not want or love. It means that we live the power to malevolent or evil forces to shape our world.
Changing the world is no easy feat. That’s why many people want to wait. Waiting is a cheap cop-out. Things that matter take effort, time and diligence.
When we fail to commit to changing the world ourselves we create a more difficult challenge in fixing it later.
We define the world we want to live in, and leave for generations to come by our actions, not our inactivity. We choose the world we want to live in by action and not complaints. Waiting is not an action.
Status Quo
The status quo is not the best of us. Far from the best we could ever be. Nowhere near what the world could be. Waiting allows the status quo to prevail. John Mayer says, “It’s not that we don’t care, we know that the fight ain’t fair…” (He rhymes well…) but that should be reason we fight.
We should be fighting to make things fair. Waiting just allows injustice and everything that’s wrong with the world to prevail. It’s cliché now, but a great man said, “evil prevails when good men to nothing”.
When we do nothing to challenge something to make the world a greater place, we’re just as guilty as those who destroy it.
When you can challenge something in your craft or area of expertise that could make your discipline better you’re allowing the bland, destructive status quo of the world at large to prevail.
See, we’re all connected. Everything is connected. When we all play our part in making the world a better place, it will be.
Don’t fall for John Mayer’s ‘indoctrination’ to wait. Don’t do that. Act. Do something. Start something. Change the world. Be bold. Be /ˈherətik/.