Rule #4 in Life
Posted by Paul Allyn Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:29:00 GMT
Fr. Paul’s Rule Number 4 in Life
If what you are doing doesn’t work, do something different.
You would think this would just be so plainly obvious people would pay attention. Sadly we tend to just keep on doing the same old thing even when it doesn’t really work any more. Ever notice when you tell your kids to do something and they don’t, if you tell them louder they still don’t do it? So, what’s the next step? Tell them louder still! net result, a sore throat.
A more societal example is roads. Notice how crowded the roads are? You would think that’s ‘cause there are more cars than ever. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason the roads are so crowded is… we keep building more roads! Although this seems counter intuitive, it is none the less true. The process has been working like this for the last hundred years: Some cars are built. The owner of these cars demand roads be improved so they can drive their cars on them. So roads are built to accommodate a few car owners. Non-car-owners look at the nice new roads and think, “Boy, wouldn’t it be the cat’s meow to have a car to drive on the nice new road. Twenty three skidoo!” Oops, now there are too many cars for the existing roads again, so we have to build more roads. And now more people want to drive more cars, etc. etc.
Wouldn’t we all be better off if the bulk of us walked down to a nearby rail station, perhaps chatting with our neighbor along the way? Rail is nice because it requires such a narrow corridor of land use and you can power a rail system with what ever energy source you happen to have in abundance (converted to electricity to more easily transport the energy from source of generation to end point of use). Well, honestly!
Now that I think about it, maybe if the people who drive those mind bogglingly large SUVs could be convinced to trade up to, say, a locomotive, they could be convinced to do the socially responsible thing (for a change) and tow the rest of us to work!
God give you joy!
Fr. Paul
