Recently I visited our busy local village market where my husband and I decided to have lunch. Sitting at a table while he went to order it, I looked around me. I spotted a middle aged couple at the next table and was shocked when the fellow picked up his empty lunch plate and licked it clean.
Okay. Maybe I just come across as an old fuddy-duddy who is behind the times, but I cannot help thinking that it is the multiples of a lowering of standards that is helping to erode our personal moral fibre. Many previously accepted social strictures were unnecessary, ridiculous and frequently cruel, but there is surely such a thing as common decency – we are not animals eating at a trough.
When I was a child, one of my favourite films to watch was ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ in which a young bride returns home with her new backwoodsman husband and discovers that she will also have to look after his six younger brothers who descend on her decently set table and good home cooked food like ravenous wild animals. As a child I thought this was shockingly hilarious. However, in reality the veneer of civilization is remarkably thin and if left to its own devices, it is all too easy for humanity to return to its baser, animalistic ways… and yes, it can begin by something as simple as picking up one’s plate and licking it clean. It is the ubiquitous thin end of the wedge.
I was much more deeply disturbed when I returned home that same day and a young friend showed me a short clip on Facebook about how to crotchet. It showed a woman’s hands holding wool and a hook, demonstrating how to perform a simple treble crotchet stitch, but it was her running commentary which appalled me:
“Stab it hard. Push in the hook and pull out its guts. Twist it around and throw it aside…” and so on.
“It has been done to attract youngsters and make it seem more fun – not stuffy and boring.” my friend explained.
Fun?
Those are not the type of words I would have associated with the concept of having fun at any age. What message does this send out to our younger generations? our children? That harsh tones and violent words and acts are entertaining?
War is currently being waged in so many places around our globe. Tens of millions of people are displaced, homeless, facing starvation. In my own country, one in seven people now do not have enough to eat on a regular daily basis, violence in the home and out on the street is rampant and the number of folk with mental health issues soars exponentially as we individually buckle under the strain of a society no longer fit for purpose.
These are the huge outward signs that greed, ego, aggression and a total disregard for life are shaping our world – such is the place that our level of ‘civilisation’ has brought us to.
But like anything else, we can immediately begin to turn the tide by using baby steps, inserting into our daily lives the small acts of kindness, compassion and support which, taken to their ultimate conclusion, lead to the ending of hostilities and violence, the cessation of war, and the opening up of a generous, accepting and interconnected society.
So, to lick a plate or not to lick a plate? that is the question.
To stab and disembowel your wool or to appreciatively guide it into harmoniously co-creating something functional as well as beautiful and useful?
Where do we stand? How do we perceive our world? How do we interpret it?
How do you?
And where do you choose to go from here?
A work of art? Yes. Now don’t laugh! I know it’s a ball of wool… in fact, a very large, colourful ball of wool. And I know that we are still in the middle of summer… but all these colours and shades speak to me of autumn – of brisk morning walks amongst trees ablaze with colour, of falling leaves, seer grasses, ripe fruits, of smoking bonfires, pastures of russet bracken, gentle mists and soft rain-filled afternoons with toasted crumpets by the fire and so on.
