By Glen Turner – Special to the Sydenham Current
Do you ever stop and just wonder… what makes some people ‘tick’?
I like to use this space to talk about good things… positive things, good people who make good things happen.
Like ‘soup cellars’, community meals, community gardens, volunteers across the community, Mom’s Baby Cupboards, blood donor clinics and so on.
There is so much good being done here, by so many people, most of whom don’t even get recognized.
Canvassers will be out soon getting donations for ‘Heart and Stroke’, and the same goes for the Canadian Cancer Society in April.
But then, there’s the other side.
Local news reports break-ins (I’ve had two), drunk drivers, fraud charges, domestic abuse, idiots running dog-fighting sites, child molestation charges, and many instances of animal abuse.
I’ve had my snow shovel stolen from by back yard, seen two neighbours taken away in handcuffs… and recently a neighbour had one of her tires slashed.
I used to run a quiz when I was teaching, asking students to respond to three scenarios involving finding a lost wallet:
1) There was no ID but a large amount of cash, like $1000.
2) Finding the same, but with ID, but they didn’t know the person
3) Finding the wallet, with ID, and they knew the person, and knew that the person NEEDED that cash.
The students were then given choices.
Keep the cash, return the wallet with the cash, or turn it in to the police.
35 years ago, the majority of kids would choose options that involved returning the wallet and the money to the owner.
Over my many years of teaching, that changed dramatically.
‘Keep the money’ was by far the leading choice in my last few years in the classroom.
So, what has happened?
There are still so, so many good people doing good things for others, yet we always need more police, more intervention programs, and more and more resources devoted to prevention of crime and abuse.
Sometimes I almost give up hope, and think that values and ethics are no longer part of so many lives these days.
Luckily, I see enough positive things happening that my spirits get lifted back up… for a while.
