On the drive to work this morning I listened to "Morning Edition," as is my custom, and the following story came on the air. I turned it off.
I find news stories about the degradation of the environment too painful to listen to or watch. The same goes for nature programs that always end an episode with a dire warning that whatever it is we've been watching for the last hour is disappearing thanks to habitat destruction or global warming. These things make me so depressed that I'll be affected for the rest of the day.
Why are you telling me this? What am I supposed to DO about this? I keep thinking.
I try to reuse and recycle and eat lower on the food chain and not use as much energy. I support environmental causes; I vote "green."
So why do I feel personally resonsible for dying coral and disappearing fish?
But I do.
5 comments:
You sound much like I do in this department.
*sighing*
**sigh** me too. I'm even feeling responsible for northern pike invading Sebago Lake, which I've yet to see, just because I lived in Minnesota for 30 years! (Northerns are not a desired game fish here in Maine and I guess they eat the other ones.) All we can do is go on taking our small steps. Oh, and what I've done for the most part -- turn off the radio.
I feel the same way that you do and I try to do everything that I can: most efficient car, recycling, keeping the heat off as much as possible, etc., etc.
I think that there are people who feel good when they 'do something green'. I've come to this hypothesis through a friend of mine who seems to get all jazzed up when she talks about or thinks about 'what she's doing to save the environment'. I don't think that she realises that her conversation makes me go away feeling like I've been laden with heavy burdens and feeling depressed.
My denomination is really into 'eco-friendly', so I get to feel beat up at every synod, tea and other denominational meetings.
I hear you. The problem reminds me of our friends whose family live just south of Vesuvius. She says, "if one thought about what that means, one would go insane. So the only rational course of action is NOT to think about it..."
I think there's a flaw in her logic there somewhere.
I just posted that we should say no to guilt because it isn't of God. Guilt doesn't make us holy, it burdens us and weighs us down - and we all know Jesus had plenty to say about that sort of thing...
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