Life is fragile and there is nothing like the Fall season to remind us of that fact. Another year is passing, the harvest is ending and life, as they say, goes on. Sometimes I ask myself how it is that we all came to be here and how humanity happens to be still around after so many years. Between epidemics, war, famine, and a host of other life threatening problems, humanity still seems to be getting the better of this frail existence.
As technology advances and men are able to see ever further into the unknown universe, I am amazed at the countless star systems now visible, with nary a hint of intelligent life. How then, out of this endless vastness, did we happen to be so lucky as to live on a sphere whose temperature, gravity, water-air balance, ecosystems, food supply, animal life and habitat all comply so beautifully with human needs?
I have decided that even if you don't know why all of this has happened, or what could have caused it, it still should be something for which one can feel a profound sense of respect. In spite of it's problems, this planet is an extremely wonderful and amazing place, with untold marvels awaiting discovery and fascinating histories waiting to be told.
However, we occasionally must shift our focus from the good and great in this world in order to try to heal and help the sore spots, blemishes and troubles around us. It would seem that our world, though gorgeous in the extreme, is also a cancer-ridden patient with gangrenous limbs, a bad stomach, rickets and seizures. There is war from one end of the globe to the other from one end of history to the other; a painful cancer that seems to pop up anew as soon as one place has been healed. There is famine, like a bad stomach, in many countries in spite of the abundance of food and our modern enhancements for food production. There is pollution of various kinds throughout the world and, like a gangrenous limb, it not only looks and smells bad, but can even threaten our lives. There are vast inequalities and injustices which, like rickets, saps the strength of many people. And finally, there are and have been terrible upheavals of nature and governments that, like seizures, have caused damage and death beyond calculation. Though this bleak prognosis seems to stay the same year after year, one wonders if the earth, like a person, will finally shudder and expire under the weight of it's disease.
So, here I sit, on what seems to be a sick and dying planet. What do I do? Well, when I decided to have a family, I wasn't trying to solve the world's problems, I was just trying to get through each day and be happy. Then I realized that I really was solving the world's problems, one child at a time. Sure, I'm only one mother, teaching one child, then two, then twelve, but one child can change the world. I can change the world. How? One day, one decision at a time. Instead of looking at the whole list of illnesses and throwing my hands in the air and saying, “Oh, it's hopeless!” I simply take one child by the hand and teach them the value of life. One life that is happy, balanced and has a healthy respect for all life is one part of this world that is not wounded, diseased and bleeding. We don't ignore the symptoms of terrible illness, but on the other hand, we don't dwell on the pain either. This balance is what we have to teach a rising generation who will inherit this little piece of dirt we call home. If it's sick, we'd better let them know it, not so that they will despair, but so that they will feel a sense of obligation to take their little corner of the world and make it better.
It's easy to sit back and blame someone for the way things are. It is also highly unproductive. Blaming is not accomplishing. Teach a child to respect life, show respect yourself, treat the world like the amazing gift that it is and with any luck it will still be there for our children for many generations to come. But if we ignore the symptoms and allow the gangrene to penetrate into the heart, then there is nothing to do but say goodbye.
No comments:
Post a Comment