All Living Things

Roberto was well known in health care circles. Always an activist for providing health care for all, he met Beth working on a project.  Almost immediately he asked Beth,

"I didn't realize from seeing you in boats, horses, at the beach and on the seashore,  about your idealistic desires to change the world and promote loving families/people, while extending person hood protections to the environment."  

Maybe it was years on the mountains in southern Appalachia which provided a more inclusive, whole perspective.  Health is about all of those things.  The World Health Organization, (WHO) describes health as the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." To achieve these things assumes an environmentally healthy planet which we are not.  Many years ago poor hygiene, sanitation and basic diseases like typhus, influenza, polio and others were largely resolved with vaccinations and better living conditions.  Today, the use of chemicals is poisoning us.  

When we design a social health care policy, we have to include all of those things.  Like a spoke on the wheel, we can not address one part without addressing the whole. This assumes living things come first, not corporations.  It assumes small government, that the populace is developed to become sustainable not dependent.  People want to contribute.  We must allow that. 

Roberto helped Beth see the narrowness of focus making assumptions about who she is based upon his other experiences.  We all do that.  We get so steeped in minutiae that we missed the view. The large, more connective, collective piece.

Only when living things matter more than greed, will we have a chance for a truly sustainable environment.