The Importance of the Day

Every year around this time is the Boy Scouts of America Scouting for Food event, when bags are dropped off at people’s houses by Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts alike and are picked up the following week filled with food to be donated to local charitable organizations for distribution. It’s a good cause and usually runs pretty well. This year, though, my little corner of the planet didn’t get a bag to fill. This was fine because I’ve been missed before and have easily supplied my own from the bunch of paper and plastic bags I’m constantly trying to recycle. However, no one came to collect my bagged items. I had called early in the day to alert them that I hadn’t gotten a bag and had three to be picked up, giving both my name and location. I was told someone would be there to pick them up. I waited until late afternoon and when that someone never came, I called to find out the drop-off point. On my way down my street, I found four others whose filled bags hadn’t been retrieved. This was not a good sign. I took two of the bags where I could contact the donators and ask if they wanted their bags taken over with mine. My arrival to an empty parking lot said that the event was over, although there were still two gentlemen there to take my donations and give me a thank you.

I found myself upset with kids who hadn’t dropped off bags to my entire section of street and then didn’t collect donations along the street where they did leave bags. How many other places had they missed? I was upset with parents who weren’t instilling in their children the importance of completing this task, of making sure they truly scouted for this food from empty to filled bag. Values, people, values. I was upset with the person I called earlier in the day who said that someone would arrive to pick up my cans and boxes of precious food cargo that I had so diligently gone out and bought for this event starting back in September. Waa, waa, waa.

Yes, that was the point when I realized I was whining about things I knew nothing about. They could have run out of bags to leave. There could have been miscommunication about whether a particular street had been checked for donations. The person I spoke with this morning may have been in the middle of a swirl of activity that likely was going on when I called. Scouts, their parents, scout leaders and staff are human and imperfect just like the rest of us. If you’re not involved in this huge process, you can’t really appreciate the effort that’s gone into it even when you read about it the next day in the newspaper.

When I shut up and listened to the caring side of my brain, the side that knew the importance of purchasing extra foodstuffs and donating them, I realized my error in being upset with others when it was myself I should be upset with. We’re all part of this good deed and if we have to do more than just put out the bag with food in it, then so be it. It’s the thought and effort that count when it comes to helping others. Just a little reminder to myself.

And you.

And it’s Over for Another Year

Seems as I get older, I grow tired of the political rhetoric faster each year. Everybody’s got their own idea how to make things better. Everybody thinks their opponent’s got the wrong idea. The amount of mud that gets slung gets deeper with each Election Day passing. I’m fairly certain that there was enough of it this year to create a large adobe style city.

The voters were unhappy, to be sure. Some voted for the other candidate not out of believing that they’re right, but out of needing to change the status quo. I’m not sure it’s the right approach, but it’s the only one we’ve got short of out and out civil war (and no, I don’t advocate a civil war). It’s hard to believe in those who represent and lead you when things are not right. But, things have not been right with our great nation of the U.S.A. for a very long time. Certainly longer than the current administration, possibly going back as far as the year of my high school graduation. That’s 1975 for those who don’t read profiles and/or don’t want to do the math. The repair of things will not happen overnight, will not happen in a year, or two years, or even in the term of a president. We’d like to think that a miracle worker will come along and fix it all in flick of a magic wand, but we know it’s not going to happen.

It’s sort of like being overweight, a subject *ahem* I am somewhat familiar with. The weight did not just instantly appear. The problems associated with it didn’t crop up out of nowhere in the blink of an eye. It takes years of overindulgence and lack of discipline in areas where it’s needed to get to the point we are today. The problems of our government, whether we’re talking local, state, or federal level, slowly developed as any weight problem and aren’t going to go away with the “pill” of ousting what is perceived as the source of all our ills, officials already in office who haven’t made us better on a fairly short timetable.

Those who will benefit as a result of this changeover in representation and control in January likely know that their political careers may end just as quickly as the ones they just ended if they’re unsuccessful in moving to right what’s wrong and take us back to better times. We as a voting body are not fickle and are not stupid. We know it’s not going to happen right away, but we expect positive results that we can live with and we don’t care which party brings about the improvements so long as it happens in the not too distant future.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Those are the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, for those who don’t recognize it. Don’t let me need to be reminded of this passage when I’m voting in the next big election.