maybe the best we can do.. sit back, watch and hope for the best – and that of course is as varied as we and our life circumstances are.
following the news on the “not so free” markets (as if a free market had ever existed) is a rather “unsettling read”, to say the least.
I waiver between a fatalistic “acceptance” of the unavoidable bankruptcies and national defaults and a frantic analysis and search for “escape options and solutions”.
and admittedly, the equally absurd hope that it will simply “solve itself” – nothing unifies people more than shared misery, and this prospect seems the most certain of them all.
having grown up and into the most prosperous time in human evolution (according to most economists and politicians) poverty and hunger are as abstract to me as most financial products invented in recent gilded times.
the one thing we can do is getting off the bench and start producing part of our own food to supplement our daily diets.
working the soil and tending the plants will not eliminate worries but calm the mind and refresh perspectives.
A few herbs in beautiful containers, a bean producing, colorful flowering vine along a sunny corridor, joining a community garden project and putting in a few hours every week maintaining the plot are just a few options to consider.
gardening is relaxing and a simple, pure pastime. it teaches us respect for weather and its impact (since we are also the very ones dramatically influencing it to great dismay and destruction).
it should also make us acutely aware of the most influential resource for any life on earth: water!
and who knows, there might be a time in not such a distant future, when food production is not an option to spend your spare time with but an existential one.
in reference to the image above (from “The Leichtag Family Healing Garden” at the Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, California, USA) resting on a bench and reading is way up there on my most favorite list of enjoyments.
“Small is Beautiful – Economics as if people mattered” by E.F. Schumacher and “The Age of Absurdity” by Michael Foley - both worth re-reading in times like these (and any other, frankly).
