Someone asked me today, half-jokingly,
“Sam, are you just trying to change the world?”
I laughed — because for once, I knew the answer.
No. Absolutely not.
I’m not trying to change the world.
I’ve just chosen to be completely changed by it.
For most of my life, I thought the point was to fix things—
to find the broken systems,
the hurting people,
the unfinished plans,
and somehow hold them all together
through effort, insight, or will.
But what I’ve come to learn is that
the world doesn’t need my improvement as much as it needs my openness.
Change, real change, doesn’t begin when I act on the world.
It begins when I allow the world to act on me —
and from that place, I act in it.
To soften where I’ve grown hard.
To awaken where I’ve gone numb.
To humble where I’ve held control.
The truth is, the world is changing — all the time.
The question isn’t whether it will change,
but whether I’ll let it change me.
Because when I stop trying to change the world,
I start to actually see it.
I start to feel what it feels.
And in that presence, something shifts —
not from power, but from proximity.
That’s the quiet irony of grace:
the moment I stop striving to save the world,
I finally start participating in its healing.
I don’t want to conquer this world.
I want to be remade by it —
again and again,
until what’s left of me
is not ambition, but awe.