Someone to watch over me

I see this tree which is in a farmer's field near my home every day. There are hundreds of sheep on the farm and had this tree not been protected by the metal fence it would have been munched to the ground long ago. As I walked past the field this morning, the fog was thick, the air damp and the sun, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. The tree shielded behind its metal fence fascinated me. What happens if there is no one to watch over us. No one who takes any interest in whether we manage to survive life with our sanity intact? I get a lot of junk mail and recently a message pinged into my Inbox about homelessness. The stark image of a young child forced to sleep on the streets in this supposed age of prosperity, saddened me. I know quite a lot about tragedy and the ricochet effect of bad experiences. My optimism, by some miracle and in spite of everything, has kept me going. There are those in this life who simply cannot get back up again after they have known only the worst. Is it the government's responsibility or are we our brother's keeper? Where does our obligation to others stand? I go to mass in a Catholic church every Sunday and in all the years I have been attending church, I can say, hand on heart, that Nietzsche  was right when he said the only good Christian was Jesus Christ. Apart from shaking hands and mouthing 'peace be with you', watching everyone genuflect, take communion and absolve themselves of their behaviour, their Christianity doesn't follow them out the door.

We as human beings, have a lot to answer for. We watch others suffer and we do nothing. We claim to be too busy, too wrapped up in our own affairs to be bothered. Just think about the scandal of not caring for our elderly parents and chucking them in residential care homes where they can simply look forward to dying. A friend wrote to me over Christmas that she had not had a holiday in eight years because she was stuck at home looking after her mother but she accepted this was her lot. How many of us could go without a holiday in eight years? It used to be different. Having good health and food on the table used to be enough. Now our expectations consume us and we feel inferior if we can't have it all. Strangely, the notion of happiness doesn't form part of the equation when we are running around exceeding ourselves. Because we convince ourselves that as long as we have it all, we are happy.

The tree surrounded by the metal fence reminds us of the precariousness of life. Why not resolve to be that fence for somebody else?

Photo copyright SvD.