The Bigger Picture


I was driving down Northern Ave. on Thursday afternoon. There were 3 heavy-set, deeply tanned teenage girls walking together, and 2 of them were eating bags of snack food. One of the girls threw down her (empty?) snack food bag right on the sidewalk. All 3 kept walking, as though this was just part of the daily routine.

I considered yelling "Litterbug!" at the group, AS IF that would help anything. Then I tried to think of the 'bigger picture'. I shouldn't yell anything in English, because they might not understand it. Either poor parenting did not teach these girls to care for their environment, or teen rebellion makes them litter. Teenage obesity, or the overall ill health of our younger culture is a factor here, too. And so is the all-too-available bad snack-food decision.

And that's when a very negative realization hit me; all of these problems "feed" off of each other. A person has to care about the "self" before a person will care about the "environment". And in this neighborhood of litter, horrible food, unhealthy and rebellious kids, bad parenting, and poor government on a local and national level, it's a wonder that anything makes it to the trash can, ever!



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