I sat here thinking about the world and the small, very small part that we play in it. To us, the most important part is the life that we personally are involved in whether it is our own or those immediately around us.

We each originate from a family which can be as small as a Mother and Child or as large as an established family with parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and on and on.

Our upbringing and early years shape the sort of person we will eventually become and whether that is just a Mother’s love or the bonds of a large and close family, we are stuck without a choice. It is true that we can change all of that as we grow older but it takes a very big effort of will and independence that very few of us have.

So we are who we are because of circumstance. Our likes and dislikes, our view of the world, our attitude towards others, towards Nature and towards life in general are all based on those early years.

Can we change? Some might argue that we are perfectly content the way that we are and do not want things any other way. Others might see us as rude, selfish, snobbish, greedy, uncaring and totally unaware of the World in which we live.

Still others may hate us because of our color or our religion or sexual beliefs. Some just seath with anger and others get physically violent in the form of theft, murder and chaos.

What does this do to our society as a whole. We like to think we are civilized and can act that way but how little does it take to turn a gathering into a
crowd and then a crowd into a mob. Just read the newspapers or go online or watch the news on television to discover that for us, violence is just under the surface. Take a look at yourself and think about the times you read something or watched something and became angry. Was that enough to send you over the edge or did common sense prevail? How close were you?

I am not a violent man and yet I own a couple of handguns. Would I use them against my fellow man. To tell the truth, I don’t know. Fear might cause me to pull the trigger but to kill or maim, I have no idea and won’t know until the time comes which I hope is never. I don’t want to make that sort of a choice, ever. On the other hand, who knows what the human mind is capable of under stressful situations.

Where am I going with this, you may ask. To tell the truth, I don’t really know. This is what happens when you allow your mind to wander in any direction especially after having read this or watched that and then letting the active mind get busy. This is where I ended up, after thinking about the World in general and just how messed up we humans have made it. Probably this is a follow up to one of my previous blogs, Todays Thoughts

The mind is a funny old thing with its twists and turns. Now if I could just remember where I put my car keys…Oh wait a minute, that’s my forgetful memory and not my overworked mind.