Growing Old – Lock Down Day 41

I have a book that was published in 1990 in the UK called “50 simple things you can do to save the Earth” I often pick it up but the sad fact is that nothing has changed, the same book is as relevant today as it was then. Having been a little bit of an activist for at least 15 years before the book, and after spending a life time aware of living a more sustainable life, with other more active or prominent people having worked tirelessly for this aim, it often feels disheartening. I do like to look back in time to gauge how life has moved on, sometimes things are for the better, some for worse and others like this seem to be stood still, froze in time. How has this happened? with all the scientific evidence and facts known even then and all the effort put in by so many, the only thing that seems to have changed is that the CFC chemical was banned from fridges and aerosols!

I remember at that time of campaigning for its ban, people thought I was nuts, it was a complete waste of time to try to talk with family or friends, especially parents and grandparent generations, to not buy products with it in. But as the tiny hole in the ozone layer continually grew it was finally banned. Today with social media we see many campaigns such as Palm Oil awareness causing deforestation and the fires which killed many animals. These seem to rise up finding public outcry then disappear, meanwhile, whilst people think they have made a difference it carries on. With my own experience many years ago we knew the only way forward was by education so we took talks to schools, sold books written for children at local social events etc. This seems to have worked to some degree as many more of the younger generation are aware of the need for sustainability, pollution etc. with some ecological topics now seen in some school curriculums. This is the only faith and hope that I have left after a life time of no change, these younger generations will be the new leaders of our world, and as our own generations who had limited numbers with an eye on these matters die out, it will leave the generations below us who do have more awareness becoming the majority. They shouldn’t need much convincing to change the status quo because unfortunately preventions didn’t happen so now humanity may be forced to find a cure! This leaves myself unfortunately in the era of humanity that left a sad legacy, when before, people strove to leave the world a better place for their children.

To many times we don’t learn from history which is why I like to look back sometimes, I have seen amazing breakthroughs and procedures in the health field that never got to mainstream care, politicians making promises then going back on their word often with amnesia on the public’s behalf. We often cant remember what happened last week as we are bombarded with this weeks news. Many news articles and sometimes scientific papers are taken down when I look back at saved ones, so history is re written to suit the day. This is why I keep adding a few news clips here, part of my diary to look back on. As I seem to be stock piling news clips to share, I will post a few today, they may be from a week or so ago but still a reminder for the future to see if any came to pass or bore any truth. As you can see many are just taken from browser news as I don’t look for news unless I want to know something, so lets start with the gloom and move to the Possible good news:

Well that has cleared a few articles that I had saved, it feels like a cleaner space as they were cluttering my document, which now reminds me I need to do a back up! Well maybe today this sets the theme to clear and sort out some of my clutter, physically, mentally and emotionally, leaving a space for more clarity as this always helps in some way. As I leave all that is left to say is please stay safe and take precautions to protect yourself and loved ones including taking care of your mental health, maybe you too might find more peace in clearing out some clutter. 💜