It’s Not Fair!
In the SF Bay area, we’ve had some extremely warm days recently, something we aren’t accustomed to, especially in San Francisco and the other nearby coastal regions. Most of us have been delighted to sit out in our yards at night and enjoy this new balmy climate.
But then I read in the paper recently that the planet recorded its hottest September ever, reminding me that while I’m luxuriating in these above-average temperatures, the weather extremes are killing the planet. It’s a startling and disturbing statistic.
It also illustrates how what is positive for one person may be a negative for another. Food is an example: I love food and eating is one of my great pleasures. Fortunately, my metabolism (and exercise regime) keeps my weight under control. Yet others who don’t share my genetic makeup and who also love food struggle to fight their temptations. As my niece Jada said when she was two years old and I was beating her at a game, “It’s not fair!”
When I realized the downside of what was giving me pleasure, it also reminded me of the bubble many of us live in. We have so many pleasurable distractions, especially in America—if we follow sports, we cheer on our favorite teams; our food supplies are abundant; TV, the Internet, and so much more floods our days with images and information; cultural events abound in small and large cities. It’s easy, then, to distance ourselves from the many tragedies plaguing the earth.
Our relatively benign condition in North America reminds me of pictures I saw as a child of ostriches with their heads in the sand. Those images absolutely fascinated me. I returned to them again and again. The story was that they hid from danger in this way, but that explanation is apocryphal and ostriches really don’t engage in this behavior. They are smarter than that and so are we. But on some days, I do wish I were one of those ostriches my young self loved and could hide from all of the tragedies that bombard us. And on some days I do.
Filed under: Links Tagged: bubble, climate change, ostrich, ostriches, tragedy
