By Huck Fairman
We live on a planet both large and small. There is so much, as we know, to it all. So much has chance and Nature made to which we add what each can fashion, what we’re eager to have displayed, through art, discovery, or acquisition.
Yes, all our stuff accumulates through the ages, across the continents, upon the countless pages, until the planet seems to stumble beneath the piling up of every kind of thing, our ever-increasing rubble, which our species down through time seems innately to want to double.
It seems our ever hungry, collecting souls cling to expanding lists of possessions that appear to please appetites and selves.
So it seems that in our world of wonders people succumb to expanding need while others stumble as they seek some purpose for their lives, which too often means adding more to what they have.
Many find satisfaction through increasing wealth, even if it sometimes seems to stunt their mental health.
Too many proceed by cutting trees, pumping oil despite our warming seas, polluting rivers, paving land, killing bees, leaving us with conditions the world won’t long survive.
It’s sad so many focus on acquiring stuff, when it’s pretty clear we have enough. But our cultures have not provided sufficient understanding of what fulfills our souls.
Too many think it’s simply filling holes, with objects large and small, pleasing selves by filling shelves.
Instead, clichéd though it is, exchanging love and helping one another our neighbor and our brother, brings us true fulfillment, and survival.
It’s not embracing the material life, misguiding us to empty living, where competition too often brings us strife.
If we would only recognize that we already have the most miraculous prize of all: that in this corner of the universe our planet’s existence defies the frozen emptiness beyond our skies, of which astronomy all but cries.
All we really need to do, is help each other preserve the planet that we have. Everything we need is here, if we’d moderate our lust and acquisitions, learn instead to share – the greater good, living as Lincoln said we should, as our better angels truly would.
