“I cant believe the news today
Oh, I cant close my eyes and make it go away
How long…
How long must we sing this song?
How long? how long…cause tonight…we can be as one
Tonight…”-U2
What is it about Sundays? There are many days called, “Bloody Sunday,” although the most well-known was in Ireland. And Tiananmen Square, another well-known incident, was also on a Sunday. I suppose I might say that there are so many violent acts in the world’s history that many would occur on a Sunday, but if you google “violent incidents on Sunday” you will get 2,200,000 hits. Monday also has an equal amount, but every other day is less, some far less. Interesting…
This past June 4 marked the twentieth anniversary of the student protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China that ended in violence. Check out these amazing photos collected by boston.com’s The Big Picture – events leading up to the June 4, in the midst of the violence, and some photos from the present day.
A young girl grabs the candle from her father to join the crowd at Victoria Park, Hong Kong on June 4th, 2009. The next generation remembering it even after 20 years. (© Y. C. William Wang)
What does this have to do with parenting, the environment, living green?
Nothing and everything.
Parenting: This is the world we are giving to our children. Do we want them growing up in a violent world? I can say with perfect conviction that no sane person does. What can we do? We have a responsibility to raise our kids with compassion for others. Children have an innate capacity for compassion, we just have to help it develop.
The Environment & Living Green: Violence is often brought on by a lack of resources, natural and human. As we continue to consume more and more of these resources without paying attention to developing alternatives, we will continue to see violence. We need to make choices that lessen our impact on the natural world while teaching our children the same.
As the oft quoted Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
What change would you like to see? What are you going to do about it?