With all the hustle and bustle of life, when you work out a schedule for the day to ensure everything will get done, do you ever stop and wonder why you do it? Of course you have a duty to your family, the community and lots of other people and much of it is out of love but do we derive real pleasure from it all?
Everyone has to have incentives of some kind to motivate and spur them on to certain goals. Many of these are laid down by Society while others, depending on our circumstances, we set for ourselves.
Whoever we are, from the day we are born we are caught up in a community that puts us under obligations from which there is no escape. No matter what ambitions we might have, most of us look for a way to happiness, contentment and satisfaction both for ourselves and our loved ones.
We all have our reasons for doing what we do but what if we look beyond our own personal targets and achievements? Is there a reason for our being here in the World as we know it or was our creation just coincidence and part of evolution.
If there is a purpose for our presence here, who knows what it is? Religious bodies all have their own individual and varied explanations but they can’t all be right. No matter how great we might become or how much good we do in our lifetime, how long in the history of the Universe will it be effective or remembered?
Did You Know? Some butterflies and other insects only live for hours. That short time is probably the same to them as three score years and ten are to us. Humans have to think of everything as being relative to themselves. We see an elephant as big and an ant as small. How then does a trip to the planet Venus that takes nine months in a craft reaching speeds unheard of on Earth, fit within the boundaries of our Globe and life span.
It is difficult to see how anything relating to the past or present that might be found on such an expedition could have any great affect on us. Bearing in mind the millions of years it has taken for the Human Race to reach it’s maturity on this Planet, even if there is another World supporting life it is most unlikely their stage of development is within a million years of ours.
What advantage would there be to our population if such a discovery were made? As remote areas become more easily accessible we still have problems with the indigenous people that are sometimes found as we continue to destroy the rain forests that have been their homelands since we, the now civilised people, lived in caves.
Of course to travel in space and investigate other planets is a great scientific achievement and a big boost to the Nation that does it first but is this the right time? Couldn’t the scientists time and the money be put to better use and spent on the task of finding ways to restore our planet back to the way it was before modern civilisation blundered blindly ahead, with little or no thought for future generations. Now it seems no one has any idea how to make amends for their folly. If we continue as we are with ever increasing demands on the world’s natural resources we will all suffer much more than we are now.
It has been said that astronauts today are like the adventurers of years ago who set off in their ships to discover new lands. Actually, there is very little comparison. From the time they learned the earth was round and not flat our ancestors expected to find fertile regions with animal life and vegetation as well as people. Although not necessarily like those they were familiar with.
With millions of miles to travel and little hope of even being able to breathe fresh air when they reach their destination, space discovery seems to be more of an achievement to those in the labs and an adventure to the astronauts. Like being the first to climb a mountain or walk to the North Pole.
There must be great satisfaction for those working on space projects when they are able to add to their knowledge and make it easier for those that follow to understand more about our Planet but what will it do to improve the World’s problems today?
Will it find food for the starving or relief for the needy? Is it likely to reveal a new source of energy? Perhaps something will be discovered that incites all the people of the world to unite and live in harmony! Whatever they unearth it is unlikely to throw any light on what is in store for each of us when we have completed our allocated term on Earth. At the speeds they have reached so far, if they travelled for more than a lifetime there would still be little or no hope of revealing such facts.
Everything today seems to be planned for the short term and as the civilised world becomes better educated, strategic objectives proposed for the future are fast becoming tomorrow’s plans.
No doubt this lack of consideration for the future is partly due to the short terms of office held by those responsible. Their main concern is to make decisions that take effect right away. Much of the blame has to fall on those in our Society who are greedy and determined to have the best of everything now, regardless of whether or not it is within their budget. Unfortunately, they are encouraged to make things even worse by a Government who backs those advertisers in the media that constantly try to convince us all that we have a good chance of paying off our debts if we spend more of our income on gambling.
No matter why we are here, perhaps there is one thing we should all concentrate on. We have only this one life and we must do our best to make it happy and fulfilling. The main components to guarantee that are a loving family, relatives and friends.
There will always be good days and bad days for all of us but so long as we are prepared to ‘give and take’ and have companionship, coping with the bad ones will seem much easier.
valley lad – [FIFTY-TWO]
