From our February 17 edition
The weather was reasonable and I had a visit to do along the low road out of Dornoch.
It seemed sensible to leave the car behind for once and walk. So I did.
Walking along the single track road I discovered you are able to hear and see things you don’t always hear and see as you drive.
There was a buzzard perched on the top of a small, very bare tree, watching me as I watched him. Little wrens flew in and out of whin bushes. The clouds as they scurried across the sky were gorgeous. There were sheep grazing and cattle up to their oxters in mud and horses in a field nearer the Firth.
And litter.
By the ton.
Perhaps not quite as much as a ton, but I was shocked at just how much rubbish there was on the grass verges at the side of the road. Drinks cans, bottles, empty packets and, in one passing place, some scrunched up lottery tickets.
These things I assume have been thrown from passing cars. I don’t have a problem with the cars but I do have a problem with the people in them who seem to care more about their vehicles than they do about the world around them.
For decades we have been teaching our children not to drop litter. It seems to be a lesson ill-learned as now grown up children, driving their cars, seem to think nothing of firing whatever they want out of car windows. Why?
I wonder if it is not a sign of a wider malaise that says "so long as I’m ok, nothing else matters"?
We seem to be becoming a race of "me first" people. We don’t volunteer for anything anymore. We want there to be Brownies or Boys Brigade or playgroup or whatever for our children but don’t look to us to run these things or help out.
We don’t keep an eye on our neighbours. We don’t join things because we don’t want to commit to anything (although we expect these things to be there for us should we ever decide we need them).
Life these days seems to be running the danger of becoming about what "we" want with no sense of responsibility for anything other than our own wee world.
It doesn’t, though, need to be that way.
We can change things. We can show we care about more than ourselves by opening our eyes to the people and the world around us – because there are some wonderful people and an amazing world to love out there.
And as we engage in that world beyond our own, what I suspect we will discover is that our little world becomes much bigger, richer and better both for us and for others.
But we need to start cleaning up our act. Now – Susan Brown.
