The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth
I feel like such a geek sometimes - a complete nerd - when it comes to nature. I spend my time on my property kneeling down to get eye to eye with tortoises and slugs and caterpillars. When I am wandering around, binoculars in hand, scanning the tree tops in search of some elusive bird that I hear but can’t quite see, it often makes me chuckle, thinking of what the teenage me would have thought about what a nerd the adult me has turned out to be. I am a birdwatcher, for Heaven’s sake. I am the strange neighbor that lives down the road that tries to get people to keep their pet cats out of my yard so the wildlife stands a fighting chance. I am the crazy lady who stops my car in the middle of a heavily trafficked road to play crossing guard to a mother duck and her young.
I think of all the time I spent as a teenager whining about how bored I was. About how I had nothing to do. And now, doing nothing but spending time in nature is all I really want.But to protect my own little piece of Paradise, I know that I have to encourage other people to feel the same things that I feel about nature. I can’t just protect my share of the planet. Not until more people learn to protect theirs.So I spend way too much of my time inside, at a computer, working on websites to educate others, writing articles to inspires the masses, circulating petitions and contacting politicians to try to get their help in educating their citizens to Take Care of Their Share.
It’s hard work. Not the actual writing and web-page coding and research and correspondence. What’s hard is staying inside. I have a corner office with windows on two sides. There are hummingbirds and butterflies out the front and warblers and hawks and rabbits and snakes out the side and I do NOT want to be inside. But darn it, I keep writing articles to tell people that Wonders Never Cease. I’ve got to stay in here at this keyboard and do my best to make sure that they never do.
- Posted in : Environment, Pictures
- Author :Betsy S. Franz
Comments»
Hello Betsy, I warm to the spirit of your post. At the same time, I need to point out that certain fundamental injustices operate through the current political system. One of the most glaring is that we, common people, are not given our own share of the bounty of nature to cherish and, in turn be cherished (supported).
You say you spend a lot of your time (too much, you think) working at your computer, but do not say how you earn your living. Please do not take this as a personal question because it relates to the fundamental question of right livelihood (as the Buddhists understand the term).
Something is fundamentally wrong in the way humankind, as a whole, is “making a living” through an economic system which is still fashioned according to the outdated theories constructed during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Have you heard of the “citizens dividend” movement–a world wide network campaigning for a universal basic income? This would allow people, who so choose, to withdraw their demand for “employment opportunities”; thereby reducing the political pressure for “job” creation through economic growth.