Thursday 26 June 2008

A children's story!!!! hopefully a good message not finished justa first go!!






Once upon a time, in a land not very far from here, lived a little girl. The little girls name was Jinny, she had dark hair, dark eyes and pale freckly skin. Her parents brought her up to always think for herself and to question things if she felt they were unfair or wrong. There were two things Jinny liked doing best in the world. One was reading books and the other was climbing trees. So all throughout her growing up Jinny kept reading and reading and reading and she spent a lot of time in the tops of trees spending time in nature. There was another very important factor in Jinny's life and that was that the land she was growing up in, the one that is not very far from here, was changing. She kept noticing roads being widened and built, houses being built, but the new houses were not like the houses she was used to. They were row upon row of ugly white soulless boxes spreading as far as the eye could see. By the time Jinny had started to grow up, she had noticed that these houses weren't made very well, were too expensive for hardly anyone to afford, and didn't even have chimneys or fireplaces. "How ever are the people who buy these houses going to keep warm if gas or electricity are not available? thought Jinny. Whenever the roads were widened she noticed it didn't improve the huge traffic jams, it just meant that inevitably loads of lovely mature climbing trees were being chopped down. Jinny started to worry, "Who is really benefiting from the roads being widened and these houses being built? It Is not the people or the land but it must be someone. For a while Jinny asked people about this and was told by most, "oh its those foreigners that keep coming here, its all their fault". But Jinny could see that this attitude was not true only the fashionable thing to say and wondered who's fault it really was and what was the motivation. "Who is benefiting?" she wondered, so as she was wont to do she read, and she read, and she read, and became even more worried about the problems in her land, especially about climate change. She knew that people had been talking about the problems for years and realised that they were being ignored because it was in the interest £$ of certain groups or organisations that they be ignored. A lot of large organisations were getting rich quick by using the earth's resources and it wasn't just happening where Jinny lived but that it was happening all over the world. Then Jinny noticed that when she got a job in the supermarket she got paid a very small amount of money; that she had to work hours that were inconvenient, and that if she worked for a whole hour she could only afford to buy a coffee and a sandwich with the money she had earned. Now she wondered how it was that an hour of her precious life could only be worth the same as a coffee and a sandwich. Now Jinny was not a particularly greedy girl and knew that her life was easy compared to the lives that most people in the world were having to live, and that she was privileged just to have food and water and shelter but she also realised that the same organisations who were profiting from the destruction of the environment and not paying people much for their work while creaming off vast profits were the same people who were exploiting women and children in other countries, mining diamonds, destroying the rainforests, polluting rivers and generally doing whatever they liked as long as it made them PROFIT! Now Jinny was and always had been very interested in history and she knew from the history books, the way that so called civilization had developed, that there had always been inequalities, and that even though people felt they were free in modern western society, essentially they were still enslaved in maybe a worse way than ever, because they were slaves who believed they were free. They were living within a huge lie. Jinny got to thinking there must be a better way to organise society, or at least her own life, so that she would not be living within a huge lie and making profits for others who do no work, just destroy the world. And she had a think and thought "What is it I really need to live in life and be happy and free?" .. "Well I need:

  • food
  • shelter
  • warmth
  • company
  • an opportunity to be in the outdoors
  • freedom of movement
  • to be allowed artistic expression
"So if i can sing, dance, and play music, then ill be happy. So how can I provide those things for myself, what do I need? Well to get food without money I need to grow it, so I need access to land. To get shelter without money, I need wood, so I need access to the woods, the wood can also be used to make heat, so I can have a fire and cook and keep warm and sing and dance round it. Maybe others will want to live that way too and then I will have company and it will make all the jobs easier. " She looked at her list and realised that she needed to have access to some LAND. TO BE CONTINUED ....

1 comment:

Selina Whiteley said...

This is amazing Jane, I’ve really come to feel the spirituality of nature through your descriptions. It’s so emotive, I have a lump in my throat. I really adore your story; its written so concisely, succinctly and with such elegant simplicity. Can I read to Sean, my friend’s little one? The photographs are beautiful too. Love it!