Maintaining my mind, and the pond

morning on the pond.

As I walk along the shore of the small pond I recognize the many different sounds. I hear the bird calls.  I hear the croak/grunt of the frogs.  I catch the splash of a fish as it jumps.  I hear the plop, plop of the turtles as they dive off their sunny logs to hide from me as I approach.  I hear the wind as it pushes the leaves in the tree tops.  Even the sound of my own shoes crunching the twigs or squishing in the mud seems to have a place here that fits with the rest.

But I hear more.

The sound of combustion engines in cars, in lawn mowers or digging machines.  A helicopter as it passes miles away along the river.  None of these sounds makes me happy, or makes me smile, or seems to fit in a way that seems to add to the larger picture, the larger thing.

It is a strange thing to try to understand, this love for my life, my gratitude for this moment to be a human being.  Because I am a human being I can know how wonderful the rest of the world is.

Because I am a human being I can also know how ugly, how unlike the rest of creation, and how unpleasant I can make the world.

Why has man seemingly turned his back to the gift that is this situation we find ourselves in.  As if ungrateful, even vengeful, humanity seems to put itself upon the world as if to destroy it.  The very systems and cycles and relationships that give us life are constantly and increasingly threatened by our dissatisfaction with our place and our industrious genius as it is put to rape and destruction.

How many times will we destroy a existing relationship, entity, and then make an inferior and problematic means to replace it.  How many times will we hunt the buffalo to extinction, and then create feed lots full of hormone laden cows that live in horrible conditions and cause pollution rather than contribute to the larger cycle of living and dying?

Ships driven by wind and tide once carried us to the far reaches of the planet, extending our range for exchange and experience.  That wasn't enough, so we make great tankers that pollute the atmosphere and spill poisons upon the sea and require us to dig and drill and rape the planet of it's oil that has been locked up for thousands of years.  What highly destructive thing will we replace these things with when they are no longer enough?

My path, the one I am trying to discern thru all the noise and blurred vision of this speed inhuman,  is one of acceptance and gratitude and vision of things greater than my own self interests.

As I walk the path around this pond and pick up the broken glass, the shot gun shells, the plastic bottles, I am inspired to leave none of that behind myself.  Leave no wake, like a sailboat, use what is already here and leave no trail behind me so that another, many others can come and discover on their own, and recognize the beauty that will out last each of us.

It's not easy in this modern world to leave no ugly trail behind. To leave nothing behind that can't be reabsorbed easily into the world and is not toxic to another being.  But I have it in mind.  I keep it in the front of my mind.  Time spent near the pond helps me to keep it in mind.

We as human beings seem to have an amazingly large amount of access to power, but we also seem to lack the wisdom to use it reasonably.