Terrie’s Tip – Don’t be so concerned with how you look when compared to others. Be cognizant of how you can help others in any way possible before you start “cleaning up your own lawn”

Yesterday on my walk I was hit withthe realization that a “relaxing” weekend for many people was not relaxing at all.

I was met with a cacauphony of sounds – weed wackers, lawn mowers, leaf blowers. I gazed in awe at this Broadway play involving mechanical characters that were ruling their masters without the masters even knowing it. I was saddened especially when I saw people watering their lawns but that’s another whole subject.

Leaf blowers are kind of like the noise of the tires on the road for me. There would be no need to put me in isolation were I in jail. Just play an audio with those sounds and I would surely become insane much more rapidly than isolation would produce.

I see no purpose to the leaf blowers other than to make your yard look good while cluttering up others or the street or anywhere you can shoo the leaves away. I understand that some people use the blowers to get the leaves in one pile (better than raking) so they can discard them. I imagine this happens but in all this time I’ve been walking nearly every day I have not found that to be the case. People are hired to tend someone’s lawn and to make it look nice they turn on this obnoxiously loud machine, move it all around like a pistol (or other object I can’t say here) and make sure the lawn they are responsible for is clean and looks nice. The street or the neighbor’s yards? Oh, well, sorry.

It made me wonder how often we insensitive humans behave like leaf blowers. You read and hear about “how to get ahead” and “how to be number one” and on and on and it’s all about “how can I either be better or if i can’t be better, how can I look better?” We, especially in America seem to forget that we are a social animal. I mean even our “social” media can be consumed and participated in alone. Figure that one out for me.

We need to either let the leaves be on our lawn because they probably fell from our trees or we need to use some more controlled manner to scoop them up and discard them – not all over the street and other people’s yards. If you make sure you look clean and like you’re the best and you’re number one, just wait til the next storm and see a) how many more leaves fall back down so you have to restart the process or even funnier b) how many leaves you blew into the neighbor’s yards came back to yours.

During the pandemic I think we did a better job of trying to take care of others and not just ourselves and I think we need to continue that behavior. Not only remembering the Golden Rule but also helping others FIRST – clean their yard before you get to yours. They may need more help than you know.

Sorry to ramble but I think we just want our lives to look perfect without really caring what others experience. We need to keep up the good work we started in this past year and make it a habit. Looking out for others is always better and ultimately more fruitful than looking out for yourself.

Sorry for the rant