When I wake up and go to sleep at night often it's with a thought to what I have or have not addressed on my mental To-Do Lists. It helps me keep track of my long term goals, it helps motivate me, and often the largest motivations are much larger than simply for me and mine. People give in many different ways. We may look out for our elderly neighbour, sponsor a child or volunteer. In many cultures round the world helping people is built in; people go out of their way to be neighbourly and ask for nothing in return. Here in France neighbours will help with your garden, give lifts to the hospital or even get your car out of a ditch. People don't wait for the 'Authorities'. They help with whatever and however they can.
I like to do a little something every day towards my both my Personal and Global To-Do Lists. It means I can leave this world without the regret that I didn't do anything to clean up the mess. Someone has not gone hungry or homeless because I did something. Perhaps someone hasn't died, because I did something. Perhaps because I did something, even though the situation has not changed now, a future generation will not have to address this because I left it for them to solve - to me that's gross negligence. Doing something is doing whatever you are capable of or have the capacity for - not overstretching your limits, although sometimes I think that's a necessity. The Berlin Airlift was and overstretch and 71 Pilots and other technicians lost their lives ensuring that 100'000's of tons of food and supplies were delivered over several months during the blockade. It was truly an astonishing effort. I wonder if we are capable of similar gestures now that are not rooted in economic motives but simply because people need the help and for as long as it is needed. The Haiti Earthquake, the Tsunami - these terrible disasters actually unite us through heroic acts of a generous nature. And if there's anything we need most it's unity... There is enough love on this planet to do EVERYTHING on our To-Do Lists and to do it in style...
Personal To-Do List
1 - Clean everything! WARNING Hurricane Lou is in the house
2 - Do garden; weed, lay compost,mulch, sow endives, cabbage, beans, fennel, kohlrabi, beet, spinach, carrots, radish and lettuce
3 - Have a Bonfire
4 - Finish Illustrations for Book!
5 - Ah and get creatures food
Global To-Do List
1 - Stop causes of global conflict (Don't fund them via your supermarket)
'Those who start wars - never fight them. Those who fight wars never like them' Michael Franti
2 - Care for refugees and IDP's (some folk may need to look that word up, it's 'C.A.R.E'). Let them have futures, not incarceration.
3 - Help grow food for the 1billion hungry folk - abolish hunger. When we've done that I may begin to consider calling us a 'civilisation'.
4 - Look after the orphans of AID's, conflict and poverty. This means school, love, everything they need...
5 - Care for the elderly. Only the best... for the old folk. None of this squalid hospital negligence.
6 - Change law and paperwork requirements for immigrants and homeless folk so that they have OPTIONS! An option for a homeless person means a piece of paper, not the nothing that forces them to become a criminal or become ill and die. It means something that offers them an education or a job, or a Community Service option. Anything is better than nothing.
Sometimes the only reason we're stuck is because there's no box for the life we've led...
It's not for lack of trying. It's a bureaucratic wall that's impossibly high to climb over... We are all immigrants and any of us could become a refugee in any moment.
7 - Stop Human Trafficking by convicting the enablers whatever their station whether they have diplomatic immunity or not... Human Trafficking is about to surpass Drugs in its scale...
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