Raves, rants and reality

I want to RANT about friends, not just my friends, but ALL friends.

Do you appreciate the close friendships that develop in a small town?

I’ve lived in Kimball around 30 years but I’ve spent a good bit of time living outside of our fair town as well. Making friends in a city can be tough. It can take years to make real friends and then you may not always get a closeness that you can develop in a small town.

Small towns do, thankfully, force us to be nice. Nice to more than just our neighbors. Nice to our postmen, waitresses, bartender, grocery store clerk, the UPS person, people, basically, everywhere you go in Kimball… because if you are not nice to them today, you never know when you’re going to be having a bad day yourself and wishing someone would be nice to you.

I really do try to be nice to everyone I meet. I try to remember that everyone has a backpack of issues that they don’t tell anyone else about.

Lately I’ve been RANTing about the lack of compassion I see in our little town. Not everyone is out for themselves but a fair amount of us are. It doesn’t matter what it takes; life is a cutthroat ordeal and we’ve got to make sure our own make it through this trial in style, or so I’ve heard.

Along those lines I find that honesty and integrity isn’t something we think about on a moment-to-moment basis either, but isn’t it our obligation? In truth, we shouldn’t need to think about it, honesty would be highly desirable if it would come naturally to us all. And yet, we hear it all the time, the lack of morality, honor or respect permeates not just government but our schools, businesses and even our own homes.

I walk my dog most evenings just before sunset. I choose to do it at this time specifically to watch the brilliant colors glide through clouds showing off a look that only nature can provide.

Our REALITY is that we live in a pretty amazingly beautiful spot on earth and yet we, as 20th century humans don’t always stand up to the beauty that nature shares with us. What if we were to be as beautiful on the inside as we try to be on the outside? What if we tried to radiate compassion, honesty and actual interest in all the beings in our world.