Location: Canada
Occupation: developer
being an example to my 2 boys on how to treat women with respect and to stand up and be a voice for what is right.
Corey’s inspiration behind making a promise to Ring the Bell:
“The trigger for me to join happened when I watched a YouTube video of Patrick Stewart answering a question at Comicpalooza. After I stopped crying, I realized that I had a similar life story albeit one generation removed from the horror of war and PTSD. This event is something that is positive and attacking the problem at its root, not merely treating the resulting mess left behind by domestic violence.
I grew up reading books where the white knights prevailed and saved those around them. I always dreamed of being one of those guys who would do the one amazing act that would save the world. Reality set in for me about a year ago, and I realized that I was close to perpetuating the cycle of violence in my family. I had always sworn I would not have the same environment for my family where no one knew when things would spin out of control and result in violence. I have gone through some drastic changes in the last year and have made significant strides in ensuring that the cycle ends here and now. One of the things that this process has made me realize is that its not enough to internally make a commitment to something. You have to share it with someone else in order to really have meaning.
I have come to realize as well that BIG change, world saving change is like a fractal picture. From one perspective it is a coherent picture and a single entity, something impossible to achieve by one person. But if you look closer, the picture is actually made of many smaller pictures identical except on a smaller scale, still too big to accomplish by one person. Looking more closely and at ever decreasing scales, you realize that the big change, that monolithic entity of immense and awe inspiring stature, is really made up of tiny pieces of change repeated over and over, combining into something larger than can be imagined. Identical in shape and proportion to the global change but something easily achievable by an individual. The power to effect change is not given to one person alone. That power is given to all of us, and it becomes a self-sustaining avalanche of tiny acts that form the larger one. I have heard that you must be the change you want to see. That’s the only way to really achieve it.
Being a father gives me the opportunity to influence the world I will leave behind. Fathers teach their sons and daughters how men should treat women and can give them the strength of character and purpose to ring their own bell and to be their own agents of change. Strength should be used to protect the weaker and to lift up the less fortunate, not to enrich yourself.
Too many times I’ve heard that one person can’t make a difference, you can’t change the world. I don’t agree. The world is the way it is because people have chosen to act a certain way. Choose to act differently and you will change the world.”
Ready to make your own promise? Go for it!