What About Us?

Out of sight, out of mind!

Friends, this week, in New York, there is much happening in the affairs of men. We have meetings in the U.N., and the G20 is meeting to discuss climate change and the financial crisis and regulation, and Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas are meeting on the side supposedly to discuss the Palestinian issue, etc.

The media is in a state of frenzy and journalists are trying to get interviews with the big players and newspaper editors are looking for the big headlines. Meanwhile the meeting participants are dressed in expensive suits and dresses and they are exhilarated and looking to advance their own agendas and perhaps those of their country and/or the corporations whose donations they rely on. They are worried about who they’ll sit next to, who will snub them, who they should talk to, who they should smile at, what promises they might make, who they should invite to visit, etc.

Decisions taken in N.Y. could influence whether existing wars will be expanded or new wars will be initiated or whether climate change will be seriously addressed or whether the big oil and coal companies will continue to pollute the world’s atmosphere and cause serious weather events such as floods and droughts or whether more corporations and banks will go bankrupt.

And all over the world billions of people will read newspapers or watch television, their eyes enlarged, their hearts beating faster because they know that during these meetings in New York, the direction the world will take over the following months will be decided and this could have an influence on their jobs and their assets and their families and their childrens’ futures.

Of course, there are also billions of people who can’t read, who don’t get access to newspapers and televisions, who don’t even know about N.Y., who are more worried about whether they will have any food the next day or medical attention.

So, for a week, it will seem that only N.Y. and what is happening there in meetings between important humans is all that is important, that nothing else exists, that the affairs of a few men and a handful of women in one city are at the centre of the world, that they control the world, that they hold all the cards, pull all the strings, that they are the Masters of the Universe.

But hang on! There are a few other forms of life that also live on this planet, that have a right to an existence too, one that is free from pain and starvation. One such creature is shown above. It is being held by a compassionate, gentle human hand, something that is rather rare.

Perhaps if humans could take their egotistical focus off themselves and see themselves as just another form of life who must coexist with all the others, then there might be more balance in the world, more caring, more sharing, less greed and no wars.

In the scheme of things, the bird shown above is as important as any human being currently visiting N.Y.

Like us, it is born, it procreates, it brings up its progeny, then it grows old and dies. Unlike us, it doesn’t entertain fantasies about living forever nor does it invent things like nuclear weapons.

It to, like each human, is part of the jigsaw of  life, an important part.

It’s a more beautiful part than many humans are!