ever so thankful

I moved around all of my life. Age 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32, and 36. Apart from that my time at university (17-21), the most recent place I lived was the longest (32-36). It was my first time as an adult (maybe ever) really connecting with the people and the place around me.

Various personal crises motivated me to move yet again. To get away, get some breathing space. Start over.

So we left in August and came to rural Wales. Beauty out my window, as a I type this. The sheep, horses, rolling hills, crows, the occasional heron, collared dove, robin, bullfinch and owl.

So being out here has helped me to clear my head, assisted me in thinking flexibly and creatively.

And as the brain fog lifted...

I saw clearly that the place I left in August, the place of four years, was the place I belonged. All the friends, warmth and love. The streamside walks, the community woods, the allotments and playing fields.

And so today I want to give thanks: Thanks to the universe for giving me back my work hours so that I can afford a place there again. Thanks to the universe for providing me with the perfect little house back there: On the edge of town, near the countryside, with a skylight above the stairs, a big kitchen with conservatory, a gazebo in the garden. Thanks to all my lovely friends who met me unexpectedly the other night at the Victorian High Street Christmas Fair with delight and surprise at my appearance and news.

Next week we move back. And I am so grateful.

Comments

[Steve Salmony]

Please understand that I am concerned my generation of elders could be "selling a bill of goods" to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation's unbridled over-consumption of Earth's finite capacity to sustain life as well as from our reckless and unrestrained dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization.

My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political/military power. Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, we need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises all of us to live long, and live large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Please, now, recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality, as our raison d'etre, come what may for the children.

When my not-so-great generation completes its unsavory 'mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do.....all things we proclaim loudly now as evidence of our many virtues.

Yes, of course, there is an ecological debt but, please, let us get real for a moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: your elders are determined to let the ecological debt and threats of human and environmental health, for which we are clearly responsible, fall into your lap, come what may.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population

[Steve Salmony]

Story of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.htm