“A society grows great when old men plant tress whose shade they know they shall never sit in” Greek proverb”
Over the years, I have become a bit of a collector of profound sayings. The other day I read this saying from Greek philosophy and it struck a chord with me, particulalry in the light of the coversations we engaged in around the time of the COP26 summit. I am saddened on occasions in Church when people say “so long as it sees me out”; we need to think of future generations. I am watching Thursday night’s Question Time on the BBC on catch up as I am writing this and listening to a debate about the housing shortage in St Andrews in Scotland and I guess that the problem exists in most communities around the country as people buy second homes, relationships break down and two people live in two houses instead of one and the population of the country continues to increase. We can possibly all identify with the problem and we agree that more houses need to be built, just not in our back yard.
Life in our road is busy at the moment as the Ipswich Garden Suburb starts to take shape in the fields opposite out house comprising of about a thousand new homes. The cost in the long term will be disruption of essential services, the view from our lounge window will be seriously compromised and eventually there will be an increased number of cars spilling out onto the already busy road. We already know that we will only be living in this house for the next three and half years, so in many ways, it’s not our problem, we don’t own this house, so consequently we won’t have to shoulder any fluctuation in the value of the property. You might feel quite outraged by my attitude, I do, but that is the way we often think.
I love this image of old men planting trees, knowing full well that by the time they are mature enough to give them shade, they wont be around, means that they are thinking of generations to come, rather than just themselves. My daughters are thirty two and twenty-eight, my grandson turns nine in March this year and I wonder what life will look like for them as they grow old. I remember an old man saying to my Dad when I was about the age of my grandson “it’s these youngsters I worry about, what will the world look like when they are older?” I guess that old man went to glory years ago and he could possibly never have imagined the world we live in today. Some things have got much worse, but a whole lot more is better.
We should always live for today, but have an eye on tomorrow. It is all too easy in the modern world to become self obsessed, we expect governments to pander to our needs, we expect somebody to do something about the world’s issues. Whether you are religious or not, there is one important rule in life as far as I can see. We are stewards, looking after the planet for a season, we can either spend our lives taking all that is on offer, or, we can invest time and energy into leaving the place in better shape than how we found it.