In today’s blog I want to share a few Christmas pics that really are a reflection of the 1980s and my lack of care for what I looked like obviously. It is nice to think about those days of being protected and not caring if you were wearing brown sneakers with a blue nighty and a yellow crash helmet.

You didn’t care that you were wearing the most flammable nightwear material that was ever manufactured.

We were fortunate to always have a fresh pine tree as a feature that was strategically placed in a bucket of rocks, placed in front of the fire place, resting on the fire guard….just in case. It was adorned with baubles and tinsel and a hand crochet angel on the top.

We never received anything that by today’s standards would be seen as extravagant. I remember being ecstatic with my new roller skates and hooked rug.

Being brought up with enough, but not too much, has made me very intolerant of excess, and intolerant of those who have a privilege and abuse it. We see this happening every day.

I have been fortunate over the past year to 18 months, to meet many people that I admire and some who I haven’t at all. That is life! We all have those moments when we stretch beyond our comfort zone and learn more about ourselves and others and become more grateful for where we have come from. Many of these people have worked hard to hold a position and privilege and some have just had it given to them.

What do we do if we are given a privilege and haven’t worked for it? Some of us waste the privilege because we didn’t have to work for it. Some of us make the most of it because we are grateful for the trust that has been instilled in us to complete a task. Some of us will reluctantly move forward, winging and whining about the responsibility that we have been given. Which one of these are you and why do you think this is?

Do you know….one of the simplest privileges that I see we are given in this first world country is being able to recycle. It isn’t perfect. We still have massive issues with plastic redistribution and reuse. Major problems! Still I see people who just don’t care and will throw anything anywhere, just so that it isn’t in their vehicle. I hear people whinge and whine about what an issue the whole thing is, with washing out and the red bin is so stinky and blah blah blah. Stop!

We are the most fortunate generation ever, in terms of having stuff! We have so much stuff and then we complain about the rubbish. Growing up, we were not an affluent family. We recycled because we had to recycle. It was because we needed to reuse and not be wasteful. We didn’t have the privilege of being able to whinge and whine about how it was too hard and too much work…..

Are you one of the people who whinges about recycling, or just don’t care?……It’s too hard, I have to wash up my butter container and take it to the bin. Council provide us with bins, so that we have an options to separate what rubbish goes into green, yellow or red bins.

Too much work to wash out your recycling or separate your green waste and take your bin to the verge each week? We don’t live in filth (unless by choice) because our rubbish is cleared each week. We are living in a first world country. We are the fortunate ones. If you do nothing else in 2019, change the way you think about the privileges we have. Bring more gratefulness into your every day and please recycle. When you are grateful for what you have, so many other things become second nature.

I hope that you have had a fabulous Christmas Day and have enjoyed the blogs. I will have a few more out over the week ahead.

Find out more about Landcare NSW. My normal weekly blogs can be found here.