We don’t, as a social strategy, plan ahead to get involved in every thing that is beyond our comfort zone. We just want to live our lives. In local politics, that can be hazardous.
Once, a young couple were the parents of an infant boy, who from his first appearance in the world, never uttered a sound. Not a peep. They worried over his silence as he grew into a young scamp. He had friends at school and played with the others, but without a murmur from his lips.
A long progression of doctor visits in those early years were fruitless. Specialists shook their heads, and told his despondent parents, “We don’t know what ails him, we are sorry.”
One morning, as his mother stood beside him at the kitchen table, he picked up his knife, and cracked his customary 5-minute egg. The yoke splashed out of its shell and onto the plate.
All at once, he exploded, “What the…?? What is this??”
Shaking his dripping fingers at the plate, staring at his mother, he spat out, “I can’t eat this! Look at the yoke! It’s all runny and gooey. The egg’s cold, and the toast is all soggy…yikes.. this is..this is… yucky, Mom!!”
His mother, at first shocked, stepped back, and then hugging her son, she beamed and looked up to the ceiling, and cried, “It’s a miracle! You can speak! Thank merciful heavens!”
Then she looked tearfully at her boy, and sobbed, “It’s wonderful! I am so overjoyed with happiness! What happened to you??”
The kid looks up, shrugs and says, “Well, up until now everything’s been okay.”
This may be a hyperbolic analogy of our times, but it certainly illustrates our typical lifestyle: as long as everything’s okay, leave it alone.
The continued public dialogue over the troubling, denuded 40-acre parcel of land that sits within our view is a good example of how we can be divested of our comfort zone. And perhaps just in a nick of time.
After living for 27 years within the forest shadows of the sunsets over the property, we woke up one day to find the woods gone, and loggers carting away the trees in wood chip containers. With the blessing of our village government, too. Only then did I realize I should have spoken up earlier.
Regardless of my regrets, I now pay much more attention to those events that happen outside my daily environment, and in the process, extend my comfort zone to include them.
I suspect it is like that for many of us.
Thanks for reading! I hope you too are mindful of how things pass us by without much ado, and how they often present themselves later in startling poses. Thanks for sharing!
Phil Brown 
So sorry Phil.
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Hey, ya gotta stay in the newsfeed!
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This begs the much more fundamental question for all of us: “What do we care about deeply enough that if it were drastically changed, we would suffer?” Or said more positively, “what are those things that we can accept in a world where we don’t control everything, and what are those things that are really worth fighting for?”
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And give us the wisdom to know the difference!
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Well said, Phil. I’m a member of several environmental groups, and we tree huggers are often frustrated by lack of initiative – even at the voting booth – until something becomes a crisis. There’s so much devastation going on, in the U.S. and worldwide, it’s beyond belief. Green issues aren’t warm and fuzzy, so they’re under-reported and ignored. At the same time, I’m grateful to those committed few who go to court (and civic meetings) to take on the money-changers. “The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts” – John Muir.
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Hi Pete!
In Laudato Si’, Francis spoke of trees — which he acknowledged assist in mitigating climate change — most often through their loss, typically through economic pursuits.
“As long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity or the increased pollution,” he wrote.
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