What the World Needs Now Is Love…

credit: Zazzle

Coping okay with the heat or snow?  Hope you are all well, and enjoying the break.

Now let me ask you.  What do you think the Earth needs, now that we have stuffed up our climate?  Here in Australia, our record heat continues, with no sign of abating, and many parts of the northern hemisphere are experiencing crazy climactic conditions.

I think Earth needs a bit of tender loving care.  This post was originally published in August 2012, and explains why we need a bit more love in our lives, love of community, and for the planet.  After all, it is the only home we have!

Who loves this Planet?  A bit of a strange question, seeing that it is the only habitable one the we know of within 20 light years.   Call me wacky, but I declare that I love my planet and where I live.

I believe that as Burt Bacharach wrote “What the world needs now, is love sweet love”!

Yes, really.  Love!

Not physically like tree hugging (even though it is nice to hug a tree), but in the community sense. Things like pride of place, which is a sense of communal love or to put it in a better way, pride of where you and others around you inhabit.

I have previously mentioned that to live a fulfilling and sustainable lifestyle, you need other like minded people to share the journey with you. It is a lonely place to be in if you attempt to down-shift in isolation or take steps to build a sustainable community without others to help and to share the passion and to bounce ideas off.

I have found that people who attempt to live this kind of lifestyle, usually are involved in at least one community group, sometimes two or three depending on their interests. This is a great way to meet like minded people, learn new skills and to build long lasting friendships. However, with these connections there comes a greater responsibility to other than self.

You have the needs, desires and well-being of others to contend with. I liken it to an extended family, who care about each other, which I believe leads to a deep sense of belonging. Humans want to belong, otherwise we would not have congregated into hamlets, village, towns, cities or megalopolises over the last 10,000 years.

With these communal structures in place other needs begin to become fulfilled, like security of food, water, shelter and the like. Even in bad times, a tight knit community looks out for one another.

Now, having a strong, and dare I say, loving and caring community is a great goal to strive for and it reminds me of the country town I grew up in.  I often talk about Peak Everything regularly, but rarely mentioned resources that are totally renewable and are around us in abundance, that are not peaking, are love and compassion.