PRIMING THE PUMP

                                                

When I was a youngster, we had an old hand pump in the park where you could get water for the animals or a cool drink for yourself. The pump was old and leaked a little air so, to get it started, you had to pour some water down the well pipe to prime the pump. The water for priming was kept in an old rusty coffee can that had been left there by someone, and filled by the last person who used the pump.  Once primed, you could pump water for as long as your arms held out. Then, when you were done, you filled the coffee can with water for the next person. The can was always there and always full. It was strangers looking out for and helping strangers.

All of us need to take a look around at the youngest family member we have, be it a niece or nephew, brother or sister, son or daughter or a grandchild. These youngsters are our hope for the future, and we need to do everything we can to help them become educated and the leaders of tomorrow. We need to shape their bodies and their minds with the ideals which worked for us in so many cases, and not try to hide the mistakes that didn’t work for us so they can serve as bad examples. God knows there have been enough of them. We also need to do everything in our power to safeguard this world we all have to live in.  In effect, we need to leave them some water to prime the pump with so they can keep it going.

I often look at this younger generation and think—what kind of a world have we left you? Has our overwhelming greed for self-satisfaction and wealth left you an empty can of water? Our air and water has become more polluted every day, by people that are driven to make more and more money. Our code of ethics that used to include good morals, a sense of decency and family values, has been badly watered down. Yes, as the good book says, “we reap what we sow” but the sad part of that is, the next generation also reaps what we sow, and they had no say in it.

I met a young woman a while back who told me a story of how she had given birth to a baby daughter at home. They—she and her husband—hadn’t registered the birth and weren’t going to. They planned on home schooling the child, and keeping her out of mainstream society. I had a thought about how close that was to children that were raised on the prairie in sod huts a hundred years ago, and why would we ever want to revert to that? Then I look around me at the world we live in, and I see where her fears are coming from. Sadly, I don’t think it’s possible anymore to keep your children to yourselves. At some point, the government will find out and they will make you comply with the mainstream. We shouldn’t have to fear our government being involved in our lives, but we are starting to more and more.

We should leave this world the way we found it, or better yet, in cleaner shape then we found it. Many people drink only bottled water because they can’t trust that the water that comes from their wells is safe. Government guidelines tell us not to eat too much fish in some areas because it’s full of mercury. Huge areas of the ocean are filled with floating debris and the dead zone in the gulf gets bigger every year. That coffee can of water our kids need, to prime the pump, sadly is being left empty.