It's a mad world

I've been asking myself how people can seem to care so little about things these days.

Lots of little things are really bothering me. Litter, our neighbour's overflowing household dustbins (left in the street for days after the binmen have been), more litter, broken glass, dog poo, people scowling at each other instead of smiling. I saw a bloke cycling along and just hop off his bike, suddenly dropping it (hard) to the floor to go into a shop. Just left it there right in the middle of the pavement for everyone to walk around. Didn't care about his bike or the folks tripping over it one jot....if anyone had said something to him he would probably have seen his arse.

And here I am, religiously picking up the dog turd, being polite to everyone, taking home other people's litter as well as our own. Slavishly rinsing out our plastic bottles and tetrapaks, creating a smelly stinking mess in our alley so I can duly recycle this stuff. Taking my cardboard to the tip, encouraging the fruit flies to well and truly colonise our house by having a compost heap within cat-swinging distance of the back door. Why?

I just couldn't not do/be all these things, as thankless as putting in the extra effort is. It's hard to keep "being the change" I want to see in the world (Thanks Ghandi for giving us this one to cling to).

As I spend more and more time with other, fabulous, like-minded people, I'm becoming more and more staunch about these things I've always had strong feelings about. Vegetarianism..heck I'm seriously considering going vegan. Breastfeeding: always knew it was the best way but I seem to be becoming some sort of evangelist. The environment: don't get me started. This is good, I think. But creating some difficult conflicts in my life and how I manage to live in such an imperfect world. Perhaps those of us who can actually see the sh*t all just have to grit our teeth keep on being that change....?