CHOICES SHAPE YOUR FUTURE
By Judith Ashton
I only take flights if it’s for an extended stay, e.g. a holiday. I couldn’t justify jetting off somewhere for a weekend. I remember, years ago, being aghast when a woman told me she was off shopping to New York with friends for a weekend. Before the war in the Middle East people would jet off to Dubai for 2 or 3 days. I guess cheap flight have made these jaunts possible, but they remain anathema to me.
Maybe it’s because I’m old fashioned, it seems very wasteful and alien to my green way of thinking. As oil prices skyrocket, air travel will soon become, as it was in the past, only for the wealthy, and such trips will once again become a luxury.
I watched the launch of Artemis 2 on April 1st with a mixture of awe and loathing! Awe because it is truly remarkable that 4 astronauts will travel further than any human being has ever before. They go to the dark side of the moon. (Pink Floyd!) They travel at outrageous speeds, burn masses of rocket fuel not to mention the incredible costs of such a venture.
I have listened to all the commentators and admit that it’s an incredible achievement in space technology. In future, there are plans to put a base on the moon which will be a stopover on the way to Mars. 6 months to get there and 6 months back. The goal is to find out if there is water on Mars and if it’s habitable!
So, what!? Personally, I don’t care. I really don’t care. What I do care about is here and now and our beautiful home, planet Earth. Earth is THE most beautiful of all the planets. We have abundance of beauty…Nature is so breathtakingly beautiful. Ask David Attenborough! We have everything anyone of us could ever dream of. We have plants and animals, rivers, fish, seas and oceans. We have flowers that smell incredible and plants that we can eat full of nutrition. We have incredible bodies that have 5 magical senses. We have awe-inspiring landscapes. We can make music, dance, create works of art and literature.
Human beings are all works in progress… each of us is a mysterious, mystical, magical creation, full of talents, ideas, visions, stories and love. Not to mention consciousness.
Every astronaut, who has ever seen Earth from space, is dumbstruck by her beauty.
What beauty! Can we see it in each other? Sadly most cannot. Do we open our hearts to each other? Sadly not. Do we fight and kill, maim and hate one another? We do! It’s a tragedy of our own making!
Why are we so blind? So greedy? There is plenty of everything to go round. Earth has enough food for everyone. There are enough medicines for all. We live on an abundant planet. Why can’t we wake up to what we have? Our conditioning makes us believe in scarcity and to distrust one another.
Those in control have become so greedy. War apparently is good for the economy! Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous? Surely happiness is good for the economy! Happiness, housing, health, humour, good community spirit, sharing and caring. These things surely benefit the economy!?
Why spend gzillions of dollars shooting off in some big boy dream of a mighty rocket? It’s all so absurd and frankly idiotic when you look at the state of our planet right now.
There are wars initiated by short sighted lunatics who have no understanding of any type of human wisdom, empathy or compassion. Someone once said, “We have guided missiles and mis-guided men!” Never truer than right now!
At times, I wonder how to react amid all the chaos. I think of Schumaker who said, “Small is beautiful.” Yes, small is beautiful… we must look after each other, walk in each other’s shoes, look each other in the eye and say, “How can I help you today?” We all need each other in uncertain times… I need the farmer who grows my food, the hauliers who deliver the trucks, the factory worker who sews my clothes etc. No-one is truly independent. We’re all inter-dependent. We’re all in this boat together. We sink or swim together. So, let’s try to connect to each other with our hearts and minds. Get to know our neighbours, and together we can make our patch a better place. Let’s make the power of love, stronger than the love of power!
