Sep
7
By Pene Beavan Horton
Walking home from Thrifty's, I come across the first chalk drawn admonition on the paved path through our little local park. Foot high letters.
SHOP LOCALLY ... BUY ORGANIC.
Right, I think, stepping over the huge capital letters. Great idea. Thanks for the reminder.
Then I almost step on RESIST TYRANNY. (Avoid genetically modified foods?)
A few steps further on, big chalk letters urge me to BE CURIOUS! I am. Who is this chalk artist?
Next comes a warning .... TV ROTS THE MIND!
I look around ...is anyone else reading the aphorisms at their feet? Lots of little kids in skimpy summer dress, some using the swings, some sliding down the playground chute ... a few mums and dads sitting on benches in the sun ... a homeless man asleep under one of the enormous trees, his shopping cart beside him.
Moving on, I see READ BOOKS. Sure, I love reading.
Next?
LIVE YOUR VALUES.
Yes. We should live our values.
1925 Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw wrote, in Pygmalion, "Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; don't sit there crooning like bilious pigeons."
Break out the chalk instead and tell the world what you think?
Whether the quotes are chalked on a paved path in 2013, or immortalized in a digitised collection of sayings by 20th Century Nobel Prize winning authors, they serve the same purpose. They make us stop and think.
Luigi Pirandello, in 1934, won the Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote, "What's the cause of our ills and sadness? Democracy, my dear sir, democracy! Government by the majority! When power is in the hands of one man, he knows that it's his job to satisfy many; but when many govern they all think of satisfying themselves. And what do we get? Tyranny, my dear sir, in its most stupid form; tyranny masked as liberty." Il fu Mattia Pascal (Mondadori) by Luigi Pirandello.
Our pavement philosopher urges us to RESIST TYRANNY. Has he read Luigi Pirandello?
Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize winner for literature, 1950, wrote, re weapons of mass destruction: "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death." The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, issued in London July 9, 1955
"Remember your humanity."
Our James Bay sage agrees. LIVE YOUR VALUES.
As I walk home, thinking about the quotes, I remember another one that I almost stepped on: HAVE COURAGE.
It takes courage to live our values.
I think of the children in the park, laughing as they play. To make a better world for them, maybe courage is what we need most.