The lazy and the cunning - qualities of character which appear like misshapen twins - are most grievously disabled. Again, it’s lack of capacity to take responsibility which lies at the heart of the matter.
‘Please Care’ was the message I stencilled onto the garbage bins at the high school where I played cleaner/gardener for five years. ‘Do the Right Thing’ - which made its appearance as a slogan on most ‘official’ bins at about the same time - didn’t work on high school kids in rebellious and questioning mode. If I was asking kids to ‘Please Care’ in respect to their rubbish then it was my responsibility to meticulously empty the bins each day and to be a constant example when it came to picking up rubbish. It was a huge and constant effort to live up to my voluntarily and happily accepted responsibility. Lots of stretching to keep me fit and a great landscape in which to garden.
Providing a clean and beautiful landscape for seven hundred kids and for the teaching and ancillary staff to operate within is an open ended position which takes energy - if you do it on a ‘daily renewal’ basis. Energy in - energy out and I am enriched immeasurably by the experience.
I suppose it was in the accepting of that responsibility to ‘clean up after the seven hundred have departed’ that I understood - on a daily basis which didn’t allow for a “I don’t feel like it” approach - that the accepting of responsibility carries the implication that you will be unwavering in the carrying out of the duties inherent within the responsibility. This can be a lonely and sobering understanding when it’s late and the bins still need emptying and it rains and thanks are thin and going the extra mile is a regular custom.
Whether or not I had more than a cosmetic effect upon others, the work was good for me.
More and more ‘scandals’ appear in the financial markets and, again, no responsibility displayed at the highest level and the poor sods who were expecting to live out their ‘golden years’ have lost their life savings and face the grimmest of futures. We will all share in that future as we lurch from crisis to crisis and I can only take responsibility and continue to care.
Hooray for my disabled clients at the Group Home where all four got out of bed cheerfully this morning and ate hearty breakfast before doing their chores and going about their daily business. Not one is lazy or cunning although - to be fair - one or two can be a bit devious when trying to fulfill their particular desire - but can’t we all? They accept responsibility.They don’t complain about it if it’s part of their routine. A couple of them sing their enthusiasm. They meet certain standards in their behaviour - loosely based on the charter of human rights - and occasionally they raise the standard - which is a wonderful thing to behold in any circumstance. They’re not too needy and they’re not too greedy. They gain in self respect by accepting responsibility.
I’ve been called ‘quaint’ before..... it was in a derisory tone.