HABITAT TALK
It is not so much where you live, but how you live that really matters.
Knowing your exact street address can be important, of course. We try to teach little children where they live so, in the event they may become lost, they can be safely brought back to where they belong. And, the concept is valid for older folks as well:. We can easily get “lost”and in far more ways than small children commonly do. It is important we stay aware of where we live and it is critical that we begin to pay more attention to how we live wherever it is that we carry on that process.
And it is a continuing process, a series of replacements, a progression - much of which is trial-and-error by its very nature. Living has life. It is far too often viewed as a severely static thing when it is very flexible, vibrant and subject to changes unimaginable.
Give some serious thought to your situation, for a moment. You know where you live but “why” and “how” you live as you do, are often variables and sometimes even at odds with each other. Persons, for instance, who concentrate their efforts of every waking moment to the accumulation of possessions, making money, gaining wealth in some form or another, and who do so with the improper motive in mind, are inflicting harm upon themselves in a tragic manner. On the other hand, we see an opposite extreme which can be just as costly. Those individuals who tend, so often, to give their conduct a religious tag, as they work steadily to help individuals they deem to be less fortunate than themselves, can easily fall into the pit they help dig which is walled against collapse by ideas of self admiration, sacrifice, and even self-mutilation in the name of impossible goals involving unobtainable heights of perfection.
We see both of those extremes in the world about us, don't we? And - they are not without merit, but those elements which are good must not be allowed to take over the whole concept and mutate it into a gnome or demanding creature of some sort.
There is much good to be done in this world of Man; there is much evil which can be forestalled if we but set our goals at sensible levels and fine things as they really are, rather than the way we may think we wish them to be.
Right now when we a nation “on the brink”, as we say, of war this can all be of special importance to all of us. Where we are and what we do, and why, are all essential factors in deterring our future. Make it personal, too. It is something others cannot really decide on your behalf.
A.L.M. March 14, 2003 [c475wds]
