Park 026

Many, many, many years ago, I was involved in an Amateur Dramatic Society Production. A friend and I wrote a sketch for it called "Just hanging around!" And now, here is one of my little angels doing just that....

Sometimes hanging around feels like the right thing to be doing. With no clear idea of what else to be doing, we sometimes need to wait for inspiration.

Sometimes hanging around is an excuse for laziness and sometimes it's just fun.

We can never know exactly what is going on inside another person so, what appears to be pointless loitering may have a wonderful purpose. Who are we to judge? Though it can be frustrating to see someone, in our opinion, wasting time, the apparent inactivity could herald the onset of a sudden, wonderful break-through!

It sometimes seems that a lot of modern life involves "hanging around." Even at work, there is a lot of sitting down, tapping of keyboards, looking busy. Part of me yearns for a time and a place where things have a very real purpose. One of the things I loved about my trips to Egypt was the contact with happy people who were living close to nature. I will concede that they have the benefit of endless sunshine. Much of their life is as it has always been, dependent on the river Nile.Water comes up, predictably, rather than down, intermittently!  Agriculture, fishing, the washing of clothes;  it may not be easy, but they seem to smile more than many Europeans. Many of the "negative" aspects of the lives of ordinary people are possibly the result of the influence of the West.

One thing I have been asked about on returning from my travels is poverty. By UK standards, many of them are financially poor but in other ways they are wealthy. Money can not buy happiness. This modern world, with its emphasis on the financial, is it a happy one? How many children see too little of their parents because those parents are off earning money? How many people are discontent because of their "lack" of money. How many disagreements occur because there is not "enough money?"

It is not money that is problem, but the love of it.

It is easy to substitute love with money. To compensate for not having enough time to hug, we give things. Rather than using interactive play between people to learn about realtionships and life, these skills are being acquired from television and computer games. Teen social skills are learned from Hollyoaks and an X-Box!

Families need to be valued and supported. There seems to be a drive to get single parents back into work, for example, by the time a child is 7 years old. When will parents have time to be parents? When will children feel more important than the money their parents are earning? They will make more financial demands on the parents, as signs of love and affection, putting more strain on the family, not less.

In my various involvements with the education system, I have discovered that although there are catchy little slogans like "Every Child Matters," money limits this. In my opinion, there should ALWAYS be enough to support children, both in the home and in their education.

This is why we need Peace.
This is why we need to learn to Share.

And maybe, this is why we all need to step off the treadmill and hang around for a while, to breathe in the air, look at the world and see what really matters.