Smart, with a heart

 

February 23, 2022



Wow, what a time to be alive, so much to see and experience, a worldwide pandemic, international tensions, inflationary pressures again causing our hands to be out to the legislature, thank you, please. Please dear benevolent overlord, can’t you appreciate our need and pleas? Another $625,000, I’m sure we won’t have to ask for anymore, it’ll help us pay for the doors and windows of our new library.

I’m sure that it will create more tourist income, it’ll make us cooler than we already are. Maybe someone will come in and read about our missing salmon and protective dike and hand us a substantial wad of cash. Maybe they’ll read about our town’s waterline problems and sewage treatment plant upgrade needs. Heck, we’ll only need about $20 million to “get er done.” Yeah, I’m quite certain that we can get some wealthy person to invest in our castle walls to keep our moat from “swamping us.”

As a person who lives and breathes the security of our little seaside town, I find it difficult to keep pushing. A friend recently sent me a text that read, “What I observe is that you create unnecessary suffering and struggles for yourself. Life gives us enough true challenges; the trick is to not add our own difficulties. The first step is deciding that you don’t want to suffer anymore. I’m sorry I can’t help with that part; I certainly can’t change other people”. P.S, you are smart, well educated, and tied with my dad for the kindest man I’ve ever known”.

When I read this, I was humbled. I don’t really think I like to create difficulties for myself; however. I think most of my difficulties are on behalf of the future and they aren’t helped by being ignored. Nobody wants to hear my strategies for recreating the once great salmon runs of the Swinomish Channel or how to get the tourists to leave a bit more money when they come, stay and leave.

Yeah, I feel as though people roll their eyes and hide when they see me coming. Being kind is not getting the job done, sometimes I need to hear a good word and maybe see a story about my efforts in the local press. Just because I’m smart and well educated, doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart.

Glen S. Johnson

Skagit Valley

 

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