Love Life.

I got given this little book from church the other week called 'Love Life. Live Lent'. And it's basically fifty little tiny things that are good to do. The tag line on the front says 'be generous to yourself, your neighbours and the world' and some of the things are really cool to do. For example Week Four goes as follows:
#22 Help a bug out of the house rather then squash it
#23 Buy something at a local charity shop and reverse haggle
#24 Visit your local park and then write and tell the council what you thought
#25 Buy a Fairtrade product
#26 Have a conversation with someone from a different generation
#27 Join a litter walk or claen up
#28 Ring a loved one

And there are loads more: find our about blood donation, make a cake and share it with someone, don't leave the TV on standby, hug someone who needs it, give a friend a good CD, use a buy-one-get-one-free and give the free one away, do a chore for someone, leave a £1 coin in th shopping trolley for someone to fing, phone or text someone to say goodnight etc etc etc.

I was thinking about it, and although there are some things in it that I already do, like buying Fairtrade stuff, and not killing bugs (unless they are cockroaches which are the devil's insects), alot of those things I just wouldn't do cos it takes up time and energy. Then I was also thinking that some of those things are abit crap and seem really cliched, or cheesy. But I don't really know why. How can it possibly be a bad thing to help someone out? Or randomly do something nice for them? Or try really hard to be nice to the environment?

Just the other day I walked past the stall in the DSU that had something to do with windfarming (that's how close I paid attention to it) and the girl who was stood there just conformed to so many stereotypes. You know, the layered clothing, big earings, floral patterns, head scarf and so on. And I immediately thought 'yeah course she's in the environment whatever group'. I don't think this is just me, but it seems to be that for most people doing selfless things for other people, or fighting to do whatever small thing we can for our planet that we are slowly destroing (or not so slowly depending on who you talk to!) is not a 'cool' thing to do. I don't like to use the word cool because I don't think it's quite the right word, but hopefully you get where I'm coming from.

My basic point is, that we are not islands. We live surrounded by other people. Admittedly I sometimes wish I did live on a desert island but that's beside the point! We should all be wanting to save energy, give gifts to the people we love, help people who need it, give money to people worse off than us (which, let's face it is by far the majority of the world) and do everything that is humanely possible to make our little bit of the world a better one. It's hard to say that without sounding like some dreadful primary school hymne.
But whether it's 'cool' or not; it's the truth.