The explosion of violence and anger in recent weeks, months and centuries has us all wondering, “What in the hell is going on?” And then, “What can we do about it?” 

It seems like we are all just running around trying to figure out how to change everyone else’s behavior to fix our problems. No more guns. More guns. Vote for this person. Get that person out of office. Less military. More military. Don’t let those people into that bathroom…

Maybe we are starting in the wrong place.

I recently saw the Dalai Lama speak and he addressed the recent gun violence in the United States. What he said surprised me a bit.

He said that we can stop praying to God to fix the violence. He said that God didn’t cause the violence, so why are we asking Him to help us?

The Dalai Lama also said taking the guns away isn’t the solution. Instead, we need to get the seven billion people living on the planet to be compassionate.

Sounds so easy, right? Let’s do this!

He went on to discuss a plan that involves creating a world-wide curriculum, that is not based on any religion, that we teach to kids everywhere. It would simply be based on teaching compassion and tolerance. He pointed out that this is the foundation of all the major religions anyway.

In the meantime, he told us we have to start from within to fix the problem. We each have to be tolerant and compassionate ourselves.

As he was saying this, I pictured a little ripple going across the audience in Indianapolis, through the Midwest, the United States, the Americas, and the world.

Have you ever been having a sh*t day and someone tells you that your Reebok high tops are awesome? And suddenly, your day shifts to feel like that scene in Mary Poppins with all the fake-cartoon birds flying around?

That person just sent their “high vibe” to you. They did it through words, but they could have just as easily done it through a smile or simple hello.

We all give off our own vibration. Woo woo, you say? Too new agey?

We have all experienced someone else’s high or low vibe thousands of times. We just call them moods. Just like we can catch a cold, I believe we can catch someone else’s mood.

If our frequency is high, we feel positive, uplifted and give money to charity. When we run on low, we sulk, are grumpy and yell at people who cut us off.

Imagine this: You are having a great day. The person in front of you at Starbucks is not. That person is acting like a jerk to the cashier. You say nothing and are annoyed by their behavior and with yourself for not saying anything. You carry that annoyance with you back to the office and snap at Steve for leaving his coffee mug too close to your computer. Steve goes home and lectures his wife for not having dinner ready. And on and on and on.

Now, flip the scenario around. You kindly say to Jerk, “Hey, she is just trying to do her job.” The tension settles, the person realizes they are being a jerk. The cashier is grateful and smiles. The rest of no-longer-a-jerk’s day is good and you don’t snap at Steve. And on and on and on.

It is like the butterfly effect. If a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, then what can our bad mood do to the world?

Since we can’t control anyone else’s behavior (not for lack of trying), we have to start with ours.

Our behavior comes from our mood: our vibration.

If we are running on a high frequency, all is good. We bring that to all the places we go: home, the grocery, work, online. We affect the people around us, or not so around us in the case of the internet. Those people take on our mood (vibe) and pass it along. And so on and so on.

Then it becomes a tipping point. We can tip the planet toward love and peace just as easily as it seems to currently be tipped toward anger and violence.

I feel that the chaos we are experiencing now as a human race is the trigger so that we can have a greater conversation about how to fix it.

The good news is, that conversation is happening and it is loud. And we can choose to get involved if we want.

Our voices matter. Our actions matter. Our mood matters.

So what’s your frequency, human?

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Author: Laura Haehl 

Image: Markovich/Wikimedia Commons 

Editors: Travis May; Caitlin Oriel