Building a home where each one can belong

I was going to write about the recent summer blockbuster movie The Day After Tomorrow that had double screening on island recently but the initial furor created nationally allegedly by the political left had died down and an online poll of reviews pointed to a 46 percent rotten tomato rating. Even the reluctantly approving within the 54 percent agreed that though the cinematography was great, the acting consisted of cardboard personalities, and the science at best is a predictable consignment to the sci-fi channel archives.

The core issue of what humans are doing to the environment and the consequent result of detrimental acts of commissions and benign omissions, however, was dramatically exclamated (as opposed to merely exclaimed!). Given that the normal summer of our discontent is also often simultaneously accompanied by our ruminations about our viable social ethics and our possibly effecting authentic social transformations, now that wo/man-come-of-age has decided that s/he has cosmic permission to participate in the evolutionary process, lends the lazy days of summer to various journeys of the intellect and the imagination.

Societies are essentially conservative, even when their survival is at stake. The illusions of Pleasantville, USA is after all a national phenomenon of which Saipan is not an exclusion. Pricking our consciousness over relevant and urgent issues is a feat and a chore. Social commentaries worth their digital count must at least point us to humanity’s prevailing edge thinking.

The recently concluded Pacific Islands Environment Conference held in Saipan that attracted political executive officers did manage to touch solid waste management and power consumption in the Pacific Basin nations and States. It was a bureaucrat’s dream conference where, if past experiences are to be a norm, inspirational talks were aired, a lot of good intentions were expressed, and research studies are to be formulated. The latter when completed are bound and delivered to public agency and academic libraries and shelves which may or may not influence policy deliberations. An old environmentalist’s joke states that the latest study on coral reef management is the only thing that managed to remain in pristine condition in our local CRM office. Columnist Ruth Tighe of this paper’s Sunday edition offered a more upbeat perspective on the conference.

Sci-Fi movies like The Day After Tomorrow do manage to call our attention to such mundanities as climate change and watching the Weather Channel, an activity Yap might have begun picking up since the virginal epiphany of a typhoon occurred this year. Recognition Day for the 6th Graders at San Vicente Elementary School included the singing of the Class song, The Courage to Care. The song, sang to the tune of the movie theme of Chariots of Fire, went like this:

Our world in transition, old forms torn apart
Creates a new vision, demands a new heart.
A new world is crushing the one that we knew
Our minds barely touching the change rushing through.

But ours is a dream that gives our world a vision to care.
And ours is a hope that gives our island courage to dare.

Sing out of a dream that gives our world a mission to share.
Live out of the hope that gives our children courage to care.

Saipan is our island, a few thousand strong,
We’re building a home where each one can belong.
Our village prepared us, we’re getting along,
Compassion consumes us, all history long.

Hold on to the dream that gives our world a vision to care.
And cherish the hope that gives our island courage to dare.

Sing out of a dream that gives our world a mission to share.
Live out of the hope that gives our children courage to care.

If ever a singer were needed to sing,
If ever a dreamer were needed to dream,
If ever a people were called on to stand,
It’s surely this moment; it’s surely this land.

… a vision to care, … the courage to dare
… a mission to share, … the courage to care.

These lines could easily be dismissed as just another liberal “good feel” song to feed on the incipient idealism of emerging youth. Maybe. I suspect that the children, when hearing the popular tune, will recall cleaning up Lau Lau Bay and planting grass on a portion of Beach Road pathway as part of a simple demonstration of a management best practice in curtailing non-point source pollution into the Saipan Lagoon. My description is a mouthful; their memory would be more audio-visually portrayed in sweat, juvenile jeers and youthful cheers.

This soon to be retired curmudgeon, who pedagogically catalyzes the singing of such songs as the above, and facilitates the accompanying activities related to it, take such measures as a reminder that life happens before the social security benefit kicks in. And it happens way beyond just chasing the illusive four-bedroom suburban Fannie Mae dream, with 2.5 kids and two streamlined black gold guzzling sports utility vehicles in the garage.

I suggest that the human adventure in our time is the expenditure of one’s life in creating the vision of a viable social ethics and facilitating effective social transformations. Let’s follow this thought-course the rest of the summer.