here and there and everywhere

Let me begin by boasting about my hat-trick in Floorball tonight. I definitely carried the team, and it's nice to be competitive in sports again. So what if it's unorganized, co-ed pick up floor hockey??

I enjoyed a beautiful weekend in Gotland, a medieval island off the east coast of Sweden. It was very peaceful and reminded me lots of Lake Huron (possibly the best compliment EVER!)

Feeling nicely grounded, I was free to ponder some larger questions. Having accepted the Taoist notion that the only constant is change, I began to look at the various types of change. First, there is the active movement towards some end goal. Here, we call this 'backcasting' whereby you start with a vision (say the blueprints of a building, or an ideal situation) and then move deliberately, step-by-step towards this goal. The other type of change I recognized was a slow, gradual erosion, often perpetrated by forces of nature (wind, water, sun, etc). Since most types of real growth are predicated on the first idea, I started to wonder 'what is the Earth, with all of her intricate evolutions and complex cycles, moving towards??' If we humans could recognize the direction of this development, it would be much easier to join along!

Using my favourite analogy of the Earth as a mother, I began to wonder 'what is the goal of any loving caring mother?' I was stuck at this, but my good friend and Colleague Geoff Stack provided me with my much-needed response. He told me that he read somewhere that the best a mother could do was to provide a stable home in which her child could grow. This made sense to me, and after learning about the delicate balance that had to be found in creating an atmosphere that would allow for life to prosper, it occurred to me that this planet (our mother) has turned the chaotic extremes of space into a relatively stable, comfortable, inhabitable home.

The complexities inherent in her cycles and the vast diversity on her biosphere can be seen as measures to further safeguard life from diminishing. Like a safety net with a more complex weave and therefore fewer gaps, biodiversity prevents disease and the mass extinction of life. If one species or strain gets attacked and dies, a similar cousin will develop a successful response and replace the lost family member.

So basically, I think this planet is only trying to create a nice, stable home for everyone and we humans are actively mucking it up!?? What gives? Are we so egocentric that we'd openly degrade our mother for a perceived temporary personal gain?? We humans are such teenagers! We really need to grow up and develop a sense of responsibility!