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I readily admit this:  My thinking today is happening in wide circles and loops, not unlike the course a high-flying kite might take as it sours, dips and changes directions erratically as it’s caught in strong and unstable wind currents.  This matters especially today because the trail I am trying to follow is exactly about HOW I THINK!

While at this moment I WANT to think about what I WANTED to think about, at the same time I am distracted by the fact that even though I live down south here in the U.S. on the Mexican border line, I also live at nearly a 5000 foot elevation.  This simply means that when the temperature drastically drops here at night – because I and many others in this region have NO insulation in our houses – our water pipes are at great risk of freezing.

Mine are frozen!

As I think about thinking about thinking I understand that I am the only one to blame for my frozen pipes.  I am the only person who lives in this house.  I looked online yesterday and saw our forecast for night temps down to 11°.  But I ‘forgot’ to pay attention to what I needed to do last night:  Leave my faucets open to allow water to move through my pipes all night.  I doubt they would be frozen now if I had NOT neglected to take that precaution.

Will my pipes burst?  A fear.  I don’t know.  Where are they blocked by ice?  I don’t know.  It’s hard not to fear the worst!

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My thinking is following an overall direction of trying to ‘get a handle’ on the fact that so many of our nation’s little ones and their families are increasingly suffering from deprivations and traumas while it appears that so few are noticing – let alone taking action to help them.

Did we as a nation – DO WE as a nation – notice this problem?  Do we anticipate what the far-reaching harmful consequences will be if the suffering of our offspring is not alleviated?  Do we know (as I did with my pipes!) what a solution would be?  How is it that so many in our nation seem perfectly capable of denying and/or ignoring the growing problems not only within our own nation, but across the globe?

When I ask myself how it was that I completely ‘forgot’ what I knew I had to do to protect my house’s water pipes, I can’t really find an answer!  I just plain ‘let it go’ and here I am with trouble!  How BIG a trouble I don’t know yet.

So, I am hanging in the balance between fear of the worst consequences and hope for the best.  My hope is that even though our day temperature today isn’t supposed to be very high, that at least the stream of sunshine will somehow (magically?) unthaw those pipes without any damage occurring.

I am at the “wait and see” point.

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But, WAIT!  I just discovered that in my bathroom on the east side of my house where the sun has been shining for hours already my pipes in THERE are flowing.  WHEW!  What a grateful sigh of relief!

Now, what about the pipes on the west kitchen side of the house?  Back to the waiting…..

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Which makes me think that given the economic troubles that are so contributing especially to the problems of increasing numbers of our nation’s little ones, and given the troubles that so many millions of other people around our globe have been and are facing, how long will our species have to wait before we see the full-blown potential of GREAT HARM to show that lets us all know we denied and ignored all the warning signs while there was still time for us to avert what might amount to global disaster?

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Given that I live in  the richest country on earth – and given that I have never traveled to see the suffering that billions of other people in other places on this globe endure – I ask myself, “What part do I play in contributing to problems in our nation and around our globe and what part might I be able to play in solving these problems?”

Because this is a two-part question, I am finding I have to look at the first part before I can move forward to consider the second part.  This seems to be an important process I feel I need to undertake because I don’t believe much in DUMB LUCK!  It’s only dumb luck that my house’s east pipes seem to be OK.  I would feel much better about myself if I had done my own responsible part in preventing my pipe problems in the first place!

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In response to the work I have been doing these past days with my posts (HERE) I am coming to understand that at this point that our national and global troubles are not without solution.  Yet what appears to be needed for us all to get busy on the plus-side of solving our problems might on the one hand be the SIMPLEST thing we can do AT THE SAME TIME it might be the HARDEST!

I say this because from my own ‘point of view’, from my own ‘worldview’, what all of us need to do – is, well – DO-ABLE!  What I am learning is that we, especially in America and in the richest global nations in Europe, evidently follow a societal-cultural WESTERN worldview pattern of thought (and corresponding pattern of actions) that we CAN examine, understand, evaluate – and CHANGE!

The other part of this picture is that we certainly aren’t going to do this if we see absolutely no reason to do so!

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Thinking about the frozen water pipes I imagine that it wasn’t ‘my job’ to go door-to-door last evening and warn my neighbors about the impending problems – or to tell them about the preventative solution.

My job was within my own boundaries.

Why would I CARE if my neighbors’ pipes froze?

What if I imagine that every individual dwelling near me was actually a nation?  If I take care of my nation and let others take care of theirs – where’s the problem?

What if taking care of my own pipes somehow meant that I had to harm my neighbors’?

Without repeating any of the information presented in my recent posts, I will just say that in fact what the rich nations of this globe are doing IS harming on BIG LEVELS!

Perhaps it will only be when the harm we are doing ‘to our neighbors’ pipes’ as we ‘take care of our own’ comes around in a boomerang-effect to spill the troubles, problems and damage right back inside our own nation’s boundaries that we give a real HOOT – enough to examine our own contribution to the whole mess worldwide and to help find a solution.

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I believe this is exactly what is beginning to happen.  Ask those on the poor end of our nation’s wealth-poverty dichotomy and they will say they’ve known all along.  Ask those on the richest end, and they are most likely to deny any responsibility for anything that troubles anyone else – anywhere.

For my part, I THINK I need to understand how I THINK about all of this.  Because I am bound up in a society that so profoundly influences my THINKING, I have to THINK about those influences, too.

But for the moment I will think about changing my mind.  Maybe there is such a thing as Dumb Luck!  All my pipes are thawed out now, and I didn’t say any flood of water spewing out from under my house, so I think I escaped the consequences of my lack of taking appropriate preventive action last night that tonight I vow I will.

Next post:

+THINKING ABOUT THINKING (PART TWO): FIRST, SELF-RECOGNITION

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