In class we were asked to think up what would be our perfect world. In my perfect world I was sitting on top of a green hill with one tree, and the image I came up with I believe I had imagined once many years prior when reading a book I enjoyed as a kid. In the this place if you were to look one way it would be nothing but trees and hills mimicking a green ocean. Looking the other way was a small house among other small houses. It posed as a quiet winter town with smoke coming out of the chimney, and orange light in the windows. It was like the perfect summer meets winter. Every good thing we get from the seasons each year was beautifully put into one.
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Of course nothing is that easy. Oh, how I wish it was that easy. We were asked to do much more than just think of what this perfect world would look like. . If I were to make this real I must consider sustainability. Where do you get your food? How do you get place to place? Do you have electricity? Internet? Then I have to consider community. Is there government? Who makes the rules? What happens when there are disagreements? How do you pay for things?
I realized my perfect world didn’t involve any of this, likely because these things can and do cause so many problems. Maybe in my perfect world I was hoping we wouldn’t need anything of the sort, which is arguably impossible in any realistic situation.
I think my perfect world ignores all of these on purpose. We’re on the brink of tragedy. Always on the edge of war, the edge of poverty, of natural disaster. Everyday is “business as usual” (Active Hope). On the other end of the world, the country, the city, and even sometime the street there is someone starving, someone being harmed by our business as usual, by the system that has been created. When knowing this I think it is natural that in my perfect world this didn’t exist. Thinking about my perfect world doesn’t hold me back, but instead helps me see what I can do to help the one I am in and make it as perfect as perfect can get at this point.
Works Cited
Macy, Joanna, and Chris Johnstone. Active hope: how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. New World Library, 2012.