Time For Bed

I’d like to think that I do some of my best thinking while I am walking. I don’t do a lot propped in front of a TV set watching one of the mindless shows that I spend so much time on. Between walking and sitting, I am best walking.

Today I was walking through the parking lot of the local high school. I like walking by the school; it is a building that is filled with hopes, dreams and unlimited and unrealized potential. Inside there are people who may shape the future of our city, country and the world. There are more than likely criminals, who are learning that hard work just isn’t for them. They will undoubtedly work far harder avoiding working hard than if they had worked hard. Whew!

I remember when I was that age, my friends and I were ready to change the world. We did change the world, well, us and a few million other kids around the globe. We knew that the system that was in place had flaws that could be fixed if we put enough effort and had the will. We were the stewards of the world, or would be in just a few short years. People should come before profits. Health should come before profits. Peace should come before profits. Sustainable farms and sustainable energy was the goal that we aimed for. Somehow, we knew that a simpler existence was part of the answer. Less is more!

Changes happened, but not to the extent that we had hoped for. I guess change is a very slow process taking centuries, not decades. I think we as a generation can be proud of the way we tried to affect change, even though it didn’t stick. Our kids didn’t embrace the same things that we held dear and that is the way things always have been. Plato is credited with saying "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" That was written about 2400 years ago but I think I heard my buddy saying the same thing the other day over coffee in Tim Horton’s.

Today, I saw nothing but garbage in the parking lot at the school. Fast food cups, bags and fast food itself littered the lot. Garbage of all sorts was also all over the ground. I would have thought in the two generations that have passed, at least a love and respect for the place you live would have stuck. I had no real reason to believe that, and I know that these kids are for the most part nice and respectful and eventually will become fine upstanding members of our society. I just wish the little bastards would use the garbage cans. It would be nice if their parents and grandparents picked up after themselves as well.

David Sedaris lives in England and spends a couple of hours a day picking up trash that passing motorists have tossed out the window on highways near his home. He has been doing this for several years now. Wouldn’t you think he would have picked himself out of a job by now? http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/david-sedaris-litter-picker-rubbish-waste-vehicle-pig-pen-west-sussex

There is no point, no moral, just disappointment in my fellow human beings. It must be time for bed…