The First: What Inspires You? – Guest Post by Ruby Ku

Bio: I’m just another 20-something Gen Y who cares, blogs, travels and loves meeting people.

I have always cared and wanted to make a difference. I also wanted more people to care because we need a lot of people working together towards making the world a better place to live. I just wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing it.

Recently I came across a story in the book Me to We written by Craig and Marc Kielburger. The story goes like this: “During the closing ceremonies of an international conference, the auditorium was plunged into darkness, and one young person stood in the center holding a lit candle. Quietly at first she called out the one question that was on everyone’s mind: “I am only one person. What difference can I make?” She then turned to the four people closest to her and lit the candles they held. Those four then walked out to the corners of the auditorium, repeated the question, and each lit the candles of four people they met there. This same question echoed from person to person, from group to group, and on each occasion the flame was passed along. In this way, the light spread, until every candle was lit, and the vast room was aglow in a sea of light.”

As human beings, we need to feel that we belong. Industrialization has encouraged individualism, followed by consumerism. People lost sense of who they were, and therefore turned themselves to products that have been marketed to them as the cure of emptiness and loneliness. People long for the desire to find their own identities and their places in the world. Last week I was at the screening of the documentary “Us Now “, a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government, and the internet. Following the screening, Christopher Wuff from Community Social Planning Council of Toronto said on the stage, “Web 2.0 is a return home, return to community, where we see ourselves in relation to the others and how we can help each other.”

I truly believe we are the generation that have the ability to end poverty, to save the environment, and redefine the way our society works. A lot of my own inspirations have come from reading other people’s blogs and learning about what they have done. I received the light from someone else and now I need to do my part. My blog is my candle, spreading the light, one at a time.