By
Stanley Collymore
I do love to be at the
seaside, taking in and massively
enjoying the vagaries of
the sea or the open ocean,
dependent in which part
of the world I happen
to be in. But
characteristically, and without
exception, I do
passionately detest the
unwarranted intrusion of
others who calculatingly
couldn’t care less about
the invasion of privacy
that they selfishly and
arrogantly cause to
people like me. And who
by their loud
and persistent noise,
either through
mindless chatter on their
mobile
phones, or else in completely
inconsequential diatribes
with each other which
they and only they can decipher,
intensify
this tangibly devastating
incursion of
theirs by wilfully
despoiling often
pristine and attractive
locations
they come across with
their
filthy clutter of
carelessly
abandoned and horribly
unprepossessing litter.
Which, self-evidently, to
them doesn’t matter a jot whether
it’s recyclable or not,
nor, come to that, the catastrophic
harm that will needlessly
be occasioned by them to
various and highly
vulnerable marine creatures
who for millennium after millennium
have constantly,
and prior to the arrival
of Homo sapiens, not only
in concert with Nature
inhabited as well as
productively utilized the
land surfaces
and atmospheric regions of
Planet
Earth itself but correspondingly
too its seas and vast oceans.
So please, urgently stop
for once and seriously consider
what it is that you’re
senselessly doing to vulnerably
exposed communities or perceptive
individuals
like me, but equally so
and specifically as
well myriads of marine
creatures that,
in normal circumstances,
happily
inhabit the earth’s oceans,
land-based waterways
and seas; and which in
millennia terms have
a much more conclusive
right to be here
on this earth than either
you or me.
Since their ongoing
presence
amongst us, respectively,
immensely predates our own
comparatively
recent appearance on
earth historically.
And they have existed
this long in
their particular
environments
because they’ve skilfully
learnt to sensibly and
rather realistically
adjust to them.
And have never endeavoured
to radically
change or even mindlessly
destroy
existing ones, as is so visibly
routine with ostensibly
know-all Homo
sapiens.
©
Stanley V. Collymore
29
September 2019.
Author’s
Comments:
I’ve never thought at any
past stage in my life, nor will I ever be persuaded to think so far less
actually believe that as human beings we are essentially and, furthermore, inescapably
who we are and must therefore forever remain that way. A direct consequence, as
it were, of the strict preordination of our personal and seemingly irreversible
circumstances explicitly determined by our own respective birth.
Categorically, it’s a
notion I don’t buy; nor will I ever be tempted to do so. However, you’re
perfectly at liberty to do so in respect of yourself if you choose to do so.
None the less, what I
confidently know and earnestly believe is that we’re all of us supposedly human
beings personally endowed with the capability, either for better or worse, to
essentially and even fundamentally change who and what we are. And in doing so
must also realistically equip ourselves with both the requisite common sense as
well as the necessary courage to boldly take and fully accept total
responsibility not only for our individual but also our collective actions.
Not only in relation to
how such activities affect us personally or each other in the communities that
we either live in or are individually familiar with but also the wider world
generally, both in terms of the various life forms – animals as well as plants –
plus inorganic structures like evolved landscapes and other formations, and
most particularly so the live inhabitants of our waterways, seas and oceans.
And significantly in such calculations doing so not exclusively, or even simply,
from the narrow perspective born of the arrogant and narcissistic demands of us
Homo sapiens.
Which seriously prompts this plausible question. Would
any other earthly species reasonably relish trading places with us human
beings?
