KICKING THE CAN
When I was young we did a lot of walking. It was a different world then. Towns and cities were smaller so everything was closer. We, as kids, weren’t scheduled to the hilt like our children are today.
Many times while making that walk we’d come upon a can. A simple mismanaged piece of trash, sitting along the roadside waiting to become the focus during the walk. Time goes by a little easier and certainly less boring while you’re playing a game.
The game of “Kicking The Can” is played with one to several players. The rules varied depending on if there were curbs or sidewalks. Distance was always the most impressive task as I recall. Accuracy was a distant second.
Whether alone or with friends it always made the walk a little more enjoyable.
No matter how far anyone kicked that can we’d always catch up with it. In fact, we’d catch up a little bit quicker than just an average speed of walk, due to the four or five step “run up” to the can. The purpose of course was to develop power and speed to concentrate directly to the can in order to send it flying.
It seems our society has taken to that game of “Kicking The Can” down the road. It’s an old game, probably just changed from a rock to a can. Since we started packaging food and drinks in convenient packages, namely cans, It’s gotten progressively worse.
It also seems as though everyone has turned a blind eye to this problem of “Kicking The Can” down the road.
Like children, no one wants to be the one to pick up the piece of trash. We want to play the game, we just don’t want to be responsible for the clean up.
The problem with this game of “Kicking The Can,” is like another child’s game. The game of “Musical Chairs.” At some time in the future, the music will stop and there won’t be enough chairs for everyone to sit. Someone will be left out.
Like that kid who didn’t get a chair, so will a group of people be without the basic necessities of life we now take for granted.
The people we send to represent us are in fact doing exactly what we want them to do. We are choosing to “Kick The Can” of problems facing our society down the road for the next generations to have to clean up.
Our elected officials play on our emotions and weaknesses. I believe they tell us what we want to hear. We as adults tend to forget the basics of mathematics. 2+2 still equals 4.
Like children, we avoid the consequences as long as we can. As we do, the consequences get greater. Worse than that, we are punishing the ones we love in order to avoid the consequences.
Can you imagine a gunman demanding a hostage and a mom or dad pushing their child in front of them saying, “Take him or her”!
If that doesn’t make sense, then how does putting the problems facing our society off to the very ones God’s called us to protect?
It is our choice, but we have to demand it. We need to stop the game.
We, as a nation, have reached our destination. We’ve gone far enough.
Let’s pick up the trash and put it in its proper place.
The right thing usually is the hardest thing. It’s going to take another “Great Generation” to pull this off.
The “Great Generation” was characterized by their selflessness.
What word will the historians use to describe this generation?