Life can be hard and unfair to you or others. Whether it is to you or someone else, we are all directly or indirectly interlinked and one’s unhappiness can impact on yours one way or another. Instead of drowning into the problem or keeping your head in the sand, you can make a difference to yourself & others, by a positive action to challenge a negative reality. It doesn’t matter how big your contribution is; never forget that little is better than nothing! Also, in life we are often confronted by a number of concerns on the matter of practical or introspective convenience (“am I better off eating organic food, or pesticide-filled food?”, “would I want to see my 5 year old child working in a factory 14 hours a day to feed someone else’s excesses?!”, “how ethical is this product?”) …well I know, we are somewhat allergic to ‘guilt’ and prefer to keep it away from us, but what about choosing “ethical” because it’s more love-filled and love is the best known cure to all evils… it’s even good enough to pay our bills! It’s not Santa-science, honestly! Try to move your focus from evil, corrupt and “too practical & narrow-hearted” to more love-filled behaviour and you’ll become more energy & need-efficient! : )
Try that simple experiment, focus on whatever you love to do, whatever you “love” will reduce your needs and “increase” your budget!
OK… I had to make this point in order to present what’s currently going on, for some of us, at “a few foot-steps” …or “wheel-cycles” from home! The Ethical Christmas Fair is happening on Princes Street/Castle street between the 10th and the 18th of December (10am-6pm) …no cement & bricks, but a large tent, hosting lots of stalls, including “Bottletop shop”, “Edinburgh Natural Soap Company”, “Little Green Radicals”, “John Muir Trust”, “RSPB”, and many others for all eco-tastes & interests … Greenpeace was warmly welcomed too, on Sunday the 11th December. This was the first time that I coordinated a stall and as a typical beginner it is “human tradition” that something goes wrong! I had not realised that I had forgotten to put the green tablecloth on the stall, instead of the white Greenpeace banner across the front of the stall… Imogen tried to save my embarrassment, by saying that it impressively looked good, but there should be also the green cloth in the rucksack to make the stall look more professional… Yes, there was… but for some reason I assumed that all the material was Greenpeace tops! : ) We never stop learning, do we?
The stall, since the beginning, attracted people of all age ranges and career backgrounds. Two fellow Italians approached me saying that they were interested, but did not believe in that form of contribution because many people just sign the petition, as conscience-relief tool and carry on with incompatible life styles to the aims of the petition/s. I agreed with their point on compatibility, but I could not avoid saying that all the petition takes is 10 seconds (if your hands are slow maybe for the freezing cold weather!) to add this contribution to the others one can engage on. As our conversation came to an end without them signing the petition, both of us smiling and making some humour about Italian politicians, more than 5 minutes had passed! : )
By the closing time we had successfully filled 35 VolksWagen and 11 Tar Sands petition cards; we had 2 new interested potential volunteers and about 100 people had approached & browsed the stall. We will be back for another stall, with stormtrooper in tow, on Saturday the 17th of December . Not bad for a little contribution, don’t you reckon?
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