When You Change Things Are Still The Same

At John Muir Fundamental we had the biggest playground that any elementary kid could ever imagine. It would take me a whole recess session to walk around the borders of this play ground. This upper case “l” shaped playground had in one corner a huge baseball diamond that was designated for organized soft ball games and on the other side we had a smaller baseball diamond in which fifth graders roamed and played kickball. In the middle was an endless field of grass that many students tread on by powering their little legs that pumped their little hearts in a chase to the nearest kid to shout “you’re it!” Every field was surrounded by playground equipment. There were monkey bars, jungle gyms, three swing sets (small and large), pull up bars, and tunnels. This playground was my heaven. That was twelve years ago. The last time I visited my elementary school was in 2003 I was in shock at what had happened since I left. I’m guessing the school district put John Muir Fundamental into a “washing time machine” because everything had shrunk and throughout the years it made everything seem as though it had changed.

When I went back everything looked different. My frame of mind had changed but the physical surroundings that I had left behind twelve years earlier had remained the same. I looked for details that proved the field had been cut in half and everything else that told me this place was renovated within the last twelve years. Yeah, sure they added a couple of more classrooms because of the increasing student population but everything else was still the same. The lunch tables were still in front of the fourth grade classrooms, the trailer housed bathrooms were still next to the handball courts, and the portable classrooms 110 – 115 were still in the same row bordered by an endless walkway starting from 110 all the way to 115. At one point in my six year tenure here I was riding little bicycles with training wheels that were provided by the school but I have changed and now I drive a four door sedan that speeds up to 140 miles per hour provided by my income. In essence things changed because I made them change.

Many innovations have come around within the last two centuries that have had an impact on our social spectrum. Many of these inventions or ideas have been proposed to better our world wide society; but as we look around and take notes on the people that live in this world of innovation we notice that the things we change end up changing us and in most cases for the worse.

Issues like global warming and education have been in the hot seat and in very intense debate over the years. Modifying these conditions to significantly affect our society is all talk and talk is not cheap, its expensive. These global issues have been discussed many times and have been solved with ideas that will affect them for the better. We already know that recycling, bio-diesel, and electric cars work so, why are they not constituted into federal law? Many charter schools have dwarfed the success of public schools so, why hasn’t our government copied and pasted their success into our educational system? Countries are comprised with many different social institutions like education, health care, government, work, media, economies that deal with issues that occupy every second of our lives. Billions of people work with these institutions, including each other, creating an interconnection between the effects of ones creations and the lives of those who surround what was created. A lot of change has been made but not a lot has been monitored. Due to the rapid pace of life and the daily activities that consume it we tend to look at everything through the “rear view mirror” but if that rear view mirror was not invented time would have rear ended us.

With the wealth of information and the abundance of life that surrounds us I want to welcome you into a paradigm of change. Live and get inspired so that you can create an idea that will serve a purpose to you, your surroundings and that creates an effect to the rest of our society. It is our job as citizens of Earth to indulge our planet and its civilization with change that will enhance our living.