Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.
Interpretation
The actions we take today should benefit future generations.
This quote emphasizes the importance of making sacrifices and investments today for the benefit of future generations, similar to how our ancestors worked to create a better life for us. It highlights the idea of stewardship for the environment and the necessity of planting trees, which symbolize growth, sustainability, and the legacy we leave behind for our children and grandchildren.
In practice
During a community meeting about environmental initiatives, one could say: 'Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, we must plant trees today for our future.'
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.
When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.
You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.
No government prospers by saying, 'I don't need to do anything. Just by being there, we have made the country thrive.'
It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences, is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated, if he were in their place?
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.
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