Welcome to autumn. Looking for awe. Resilience centres.

Today is the first official day of autumn! And what a good one it is. Blue sky and sunshine! A perfect day to be out and about. 

Awe! According to this article we should all be looking for sights to amaze us and fill us with awe. No doubt going around spotting impressive things is a lot better for body and mind that taking anti-depressants. I have long been an advocate of walking around cities looking at the tops of buildings, often more impressive than the ground floor. It is a sad fact of modern life that almost all city centres look remarkably similar to each other down at ground level, with the same shops and the same window displays. This used to be less true of foreign city centres but I suspect that cultural homogenisation has put a stop to that. It’s not just MacDonald’s and Burger King either. H&M and Zara and Mango are ubiquitous and last year we even spotted a Primark in the shopping mall that used to be Urzáiz railway station in Vigo. 

One thing the article suggests is taking photos views and even smaller sights impress you. I have been doing this for years. Here are a few of today’s “bits of beauty”:

The article also mentions a poem by William Martin, pointing out the awesomeness of everyday life. Here it is:

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

From: The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

It seems to me that many of the proposals our government is coming up with for dealing with the crisis help the already wealthy, or at least comfortably off, more than they do the poor and those struggling to manage on very low wages. 

One suggestion in response to rising energy bills I saw some time ago was opening places where people could go to keep warm if/when they cannot afford to heat their homes. An excellent idea, no doubt, but one that needs proper organisation. This article talks about “resilience centres” in California, intended to provide places for people to keep cool during the heatwave.

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/23/california-extreme-heat-resilience-centers

Empty air-conditioned venues remained empty despite the heat because, as the article points out, people are not able to put their lives on hold and sit still for hours to keep cool (or warm, for that matter):

“Cooling centers are not well utilized because what you get is basically an empty gymnasium, where the temperature certainly is low, but it’s full of folding chairs and not much else,” said Chase Engelhardt, policy analyst at Climate Resolve, an advocacy group in Los Angeles.

“People aren’t Sims,” he added, referring to the computer game. “They won’t just go into a building, sit down for three hours and then leave once their body reaches some level of rest.”

Once activities and facilities were put in place the response improved. Not everyone is going to go and sit in the library. Some thought needs to go into the matter.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!