Tuesday, September 22, 2015

McMansions, Leftovers, Stuff and Time

Taking a leisurely cycle through a flurry of McMansions in beautiful Southern Chester county, it occurred to me how much free and available room there is.  How many houses have spare rooms or space that is not used and is never or rarely even passed through. With that thought fresh in my mind I pulled into a cafe for a coffee to see someone dumping their unfinished breakfast into the garbage.

We live in a world where there is so much discussion and talk about the lack of resources, especially for those people in the lower tax bracket, the really low tax bracket.  Many people who live under the poverty level, or for that matter earn $2 a day or around that amount, struggled for food, shelter, clothing and clean water each day.

Running in parallel each day are millions of homes around the world who have spare rooms, a lot of stuff that is never used, a never ending waste of running water in the form of baths, showers, toilets, gardens, pools etc.  And then millions of people go grocery shopping or go out to eat and a percentage of each purchase makes its way into the garbage, or compost heap.

There is a stark imbalance of resource usage, NOT a stark imbalance of resources, neither is there a shortage of resources.  The latter is even more true because of the resources we use to to get the stuff that we don't use or waste.

And then there is our time.  How do we really spend it, and does the way we spend it really contribute to the well being of all those around the world we have empathy for?

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