Thursday, January 19, 2006

I heard a comment while at work

Well I heard more than one, and I will get to that in a second. I would like to be volunteering my time building trial right now, but I have another test at 1:30 and then I am volunteering teaching snowboarding for disadvantaged youth tonight, so next week I will do both, but finding the balance right now is the challange, as it always is. I am getting a lot of satisfaction out of the volunteer thing, helping to better our community, doing my small part, helping to create my vision of the way I would like it to be. This is why the comment I overheard at work struck a cord with me. A regular who comes in to the restaurant where I work and seems to be a complex individual said something to the effect of "as individuals we are always supposed to leave a place, be it a bar, a room, a bathroom better than we found it," he related it to the edwardian and victorian ages being killed by World War I or was it WWII, I cant remember which war it was. He was advocating the formation of a gentelmens society that would have the basic premise be that, that you always leave a place better than you found it and if everyone started doing this there would be no messes to clean up. Well lets take it a step further, if we all did a small thing each day and left ever place we went better than we found it what would society look like. Could we knowingly drive our cars? Shop at the store and use one use containers? But if this feeling where the driving life force, the earth would not be where it is today, we would be living much different lives, becasue is the earth not a place that we visit and must strive to better each and every day. I personally think that we our overly concerned with stuff, without really caring where it came from. We are concerned with quantity over quality. If we adopted the regulars way of thinking and expanded it from just the places that we visit to the overall place that we live, earth and our environment, we might have less stuff but a greater quality of life. When it comes down to it for me, I struggle some days, like we all do, with instant gratification, I want to see results. I think does what one does really matter, well yes and no. Nothing can souly done with the intention being to please others, the motivation must come from within. Not that you dont do things for others or to help them you most certainly must and do, but you cant not always be looking for immediate rewards and gratification. I am an advocate of community, and I hope this is making sense to you all, because it is a little wordy and rambling, I am prone to both of these things, as most of you that read this are probably already aware of. So back to the point. I am going to do something small everday to make where I go and mostly the earth a better place to be. be it on my walk with my dogs to pick up trash in my area of town, be it help a co worker out, plant a tree, etc. " Be the change you want to see in the world"-ghandi This is one of my favorite quotes and really rings true for me. Each day the more I look in to it and the more I hear we as a society are getting it we are moving in the right direction. However we need to rethink the way we live and think about living another way, leaving a lighter footprint on the earth, I am reading about soil right now and we really need to work towards restoring the land without chemicals, in a sound ecological way if we are to succeed as a society, if not, if we keep raping the earth of its natural resources we will be our own worst enemy. Another quote and I am unsure where it comes from but I hear it a bunch, goes something to the effect of "we are our own worst enemies" truth be told when or if we have a huge collapse the only ones that we can blame are ourselves. It is kind of like not voting and then bitching about the president, "not voting is voting" a quote from the Ginger Ninjas. So enough of my rambling, there are no definate answers, but lets all work towards a world that is nuturing to the environment and to each other,treating each other as brothers and sisters, not that we need to love one another, but lets all just move towards getting along peacfully. Farfetched, maybe, maybe not. think about it, live and examined life, one baby step at a time. as always keep pedaling, use it as meditation, solve all the problems of the world while out then come home and take some baby steps. Visulize whirled peas!!!!! thanks for reading. I have some links but another day. Text is the only thing today.

1 comment:

PaddyH said...

good on ya, good read, thanks for sharing that.