Take a Local Interest

Star Trek once mused
that asking if you
could help would
become as famous
as saying "I love you,"

but I've got
a different
phrase in mind,
and it's been
one I've used
for years,
just to myself,
when wondering
why it's so
hard for people
to care about
their surroundings,
why we seem
doomed to become
a society of butlers.

"Take a local interest."

Just see that it's
no one's responsibility
but your own, that
if you can, you should,
that maybe you ought
to have some pride.

Another Star Trek
put into question
"The needs of the many
outweigh the needs of
the few, or the one,"
but seemed to get
it wrong.

I think what it
originally meant
was that, in a
conscious society,
the few or the one
were not slaves
but rather aware
that their actions
had the greater
impact for being
in a minority,
that it is better
to think in terms
that include
oneself as well as
others than to dwell
merely on one
or the other,
the many a reflection
of the worth of the one.

We tend to think
in negative terms.
I should know.
But I believe
that we don't have to,
that a belief
that casts the roll
of the weak as less
than the strong
merely as a matter
of course is wrong,
that we don't have to accept
that (in the gospels,
it's a new commandment),
or believe that all
that we have gained
can or must be lost.
Call me a pharaoh,
but I think you
can take it with you,
if not in the literal
sense, then in
what you leave behind.

I believe that the way
you conduct yourself
is the way you will
be remembered. I don't
believe that we all must
be saints, but rather
that we must accept
that the basic meaning
of humanity is the chance
to understand humanity,
not as an abstract concept
but as a community we
approach in our own way,
but an approach that
must be done. To avoid it
is to shun our own
humanity, and that is
what I believe most people,
without realizing it,
spend their lives doing.

Funny to hear this from
a guy everyone assumes
is shy, who freely admits
he prefers time alone.

But to take a local interest
is to embrace the possibilities
we are continually offering
ourselves, whether we embrace
them or not, recognize them
or turn our backs to them,
to do what we can because
we can and because it is
the right thing to do, not
because we get anything from it,
but because, in the end, we
are better remembered for it,
and help the rest of humanity
along the way.