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It just makes sense

February 28, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There is a lot about kindness, helpfulness and love in some of the writing in this week’s Citizen. In a world where so much is about violence, harm, greed and down right harshness, beams of the other poke through like pure sunlight piercing storm clouds. 

Late-ish last year, there was a great deal talked about Paying it back to the point where it tried to become a fad. Where videos were being made of a person buying lunch for another person living on the streets. 

There is a new(also)-ish trend in churches to really remember their Founder’s edict for us to care for one another but not in a public way, not splashed across the screens of our seven billion friends, but simply, unobtrusively, as though it only makes sense. Churches are hold soup and a bun days where everything is donated and the $3 charge per serving goes to a shelter; they have clothing give-aways; they do all they can for homeless men for whom there is no shelter; the run their own food banks; they offer counselling and comfort without passing around a plate. 

In the cities, in the town, there is a growing understanding that we must care for those in need; we can’t just let them die in the streets. There are a growing number of organizations, not fly by night, but run by people who know what they are doing, to rescue girls and women in danger of being tied unwillingly to the sex trade; to protect vulnerable teens from becoming part of the human trafficking problem.

There are organizations qualified to assist people with special needs to let fuller lives.

The problem of climate change is being attacked on so many fronts; it needs only business and politicians to follow the lead. This is no longer simply a matter being handled at the grass root level but on every level of business, construction, transportation and agriculture. People with serious money and more serious intent are pushing in the right directions to ease the whole big picture to take the pressure off the planet and the creatures that live upon it, including, by the way, us. 

There are no longer any excuses, any rationale for supporting any business or activity that works against the benefit of the planet. Nature has already, always, provided  all the answers if we would only listen. In this, we must be very public and shout from the roof tops, the answers, the knowledge that is reasonably common, of how our attitudes and our life styles have to change; in some case, how they have to be reversed.

We went through that period – is it over now – of the “me” years or decades, I can’t remember but there is a final and decisive push back to that now that says, loud and clear, take care of one another. Take care of where you live.

The principles have to be very public. Every time an already invented method of living more cleanly for the environment comes into focus, that should out shout the myopic business men, industry still standing. Reasons why pipelines are beyond old fashioned and our of date, alternatives must be blazoned across the internet: harm versus rescue. In every good story, don’t we cheer for rescue?

We must put money in its place. That is, not “stuff”, but our loved ones.

So, for the first time in a thousand years, we have to re-write our values and understand that the needs of the planet outweigh the needs of the few – all of us. And it is simple because we don’t really have to do without anything we want; we just have to re-assess what it is we do want. 

Breathable air. Nourishing food. A safe environment for what grows and lives here. A time of peace when war is no longer profitable. A time when women can live in a clean environment, eat food that is good for their babies and have children who suffer less from odd diseases and allergies. 

It is time to live in a world run by logic, not disfunction. Now, governments must their true responsibilities which are to harbour a safe and clean place for the populace that voted for them, not pander to the lobbyists who have their own, illogical agendas that stuck in the old, outdated ways of “me first.”

We can wake up in the morning and think, how can I help? Where can I improve the day, the life, the rest of the year for an individual or, indeed, as large a picture as you can imagine? 

Leisa Way certainly summed a logical business plan: do the right thing by another, even at a cost, and it return from elsewhere.

 You do your best for people and the environment, then you reap the rewards of balanced economy and a cleaner world.

This is about wisdom and long term safety. Logic. Survival. And it is the only way.

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