I have weaknesses and strengths, this weekend I decided to act on one of my weaknesses. Quite often we can get lost in our purpose, words, or actions. I made a critical blunder and I forgot to treat people with due diligence and respect all the time, no matter how angry, sad, happy or frustrated I may be. My emotions got the better of me and I became overzealous and acted like a thug…on my grandpas 80th birthday party no less. I made a mistake and apologize for any harm, stress and pain I no doubt caused. In fact I have made many mistakes in the past and I would like to extend the same apologize for those transgressions as well.
I will not get into the details of my mistake, as that is not my place. Its not the time to be a pessimist, the past is the past and it cannot be undone, that being said everyone starts everyday with a blank slate. We all have the ability to make choices every day of our lives and the world we live in is connected and our actions affect everyone else in some way.
After my mistake I was offered some great advice, that I should “be proactive” with my endeavours.
Recently I have become more involved with trying to change certain behaviours that humans tend to possess towards the environment. I keep being told how passionate I am about my efforts, however I feel that tends to discredit my actions as a fringe hobby that does not have an impact. My mistake happened during an argument that involved factors about the environment, and some of my past environmental errors were brought to light.
I am an adult and I have to take responsibility for my actions, I am not perfect and I will try my best to not claim or act like I am. I admit that I have made mistakes in the past that have caused great impacts towards the very environment, the same environment that I am trying to protect. I realize now that I will gladly reveal all of mistakes if that’s what it takes to have a conversation about the environment, I have nothing to hide. I do not want these conversations to break down into you don’t do this and I do this, which will never benefit anyone. However on that note I do not think it fair for people to focus one imperfection or blemish that a person may have, and using this to discredit the views that the person may have. There is only so much evidence that scientists can gather, and so much time. I have to stop waiting for everyone else to start taking action, and have to start myself. It is also not fair to say that we are only human, humans are capable of extraordinary things and are able to change very quickly as the last century has shown us.
We all have the same makeup and needs on this lonely boat called Earth, and we all spill the same blood. We have a crisis on our hands and some of us are in denial. It took us 300 years to officially acknowledge that the world revolves around the sun, which is now considered common knowledge. You can do what you want with this email you can forward it to make fun of it, or you can place it in the trashcan, it won’t hurt my feelings.
I am going to undergo a challenge; one that I myself had not participated in until one hour ago. I often walk around and criticize the dirt and garbage that I see. I would make these complaints and yet I never did anything about it. If I want to be proud of my city, my work cannot end where my lawn does. I cannot complain about every thing and expect everyone else or the city to clean up the mess so that I can be happy. I have to do some work, and I cannot expect anything in return, not even a thank you. I may even be attacked for actions, but I will have to just grin through it. So I am starting off small, and easy and I have challenged myself to pick up one piece of garbage from a street, lawn, building, river…be it on my way to or from work, the grocery store or bar, while I am jogging, cycling, or walking, you name it…be it a cigarette butt, grocery bag or tire and place it in the nearest recycling bin or garbage can.
If I manage to find something that is still reusable (see below), I am going to let people know and give them the option to take it off my hands and put it to use. It would not matter if you did it once a day, week, month, or if you only ever did it once, nor does it matter if you forget to do so. It is very easy to think that I cannot do anything to help these days. It is often quite easy to discredit our actions in such a large place full of 7 billion people, however picking up a piece of trash once in your life will have a significantly more profound impact than if you had never done it. I welcome you to join me, and again it will not hurt my feelings if you can’t or don’t want to participate.
The attachments show what I managed to collect on a 1.3 km or 15 minute walk home from the bus stop. As usual I got a little carried away, I even managed to find a bag to carry everything I found. By the way does anyone need a perfectly good, slightly used flat-head screwdriver?
As always I welcome feedback or ways to reduce my environmental impact. Have a great day!
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