Improving Canada

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Improving Canada


My husband and I speak about this often. How much do we need to improve Canada? Does Canada need improving? What could we do, or what would we do to improve our Country?

Perhaps we would start over if we could, but that is a inane proposal. So where do we start from here?

After much critique, discussion, many questions and ideas, we nearly always end at this point - we live in a beautiful Country but in our society as a whole, the lack of respect is apparent. To suggest this lack of respect is only in "human" relationships, would be a falsity, greater than the lack of respect itself.

In our everyday life, the respect once revered towards family and friends, human relationships, travel, communications, entertainment, construction, (this list could go on), has dwindled to expectation. The expectation for advancement in every avenue of modern life without preparation, education, research, labour, saving, or working together, has degraded our values and lessened any respect for those deserving.

For any relationship to work, it needs to be based on the truest forms of honesty and loyalties, trust and compassion, friendship and support, knowledge and values.

For any of these to exist, there must be a firm foundation, a stronghold of support. As with any foundation it must be created with confidence and esteem, and that must come from within. As for any relationship, our Country, Canada, is built on a foundation of many facets of race, creed, beliefs, education, religious and sexual preference, not to mention broken and extended family relations, and yes, the rights of each individual.

Does this make us a Country in need of repair? Is it in need of "improvements"? Do we need to create a New Canada? Possibly, but more likely than not, we only need to take a step back; As we step forward, progressing in melding religions, integrating race, reclassifying marital status, accepting with ease the breakup of the family unit, commercializing different sexual practices, and everything else the words "free and democratic society" implies, we survive. Yet our society bleeds from the wounds opened by our Social Leaders. We cry the tears of the starving and homeless. We fear the angry children left to fend for themselves, and admonish the establishment who punish them. The foundation of respect and esteem has crumbled and fallen. The simple respect we once gave the walls of justice, the road of freedom, the stability of Family, our family and teachers, ourselves and each other, and our quality of life can only reside hidden and oppressed under each broken stone.

As is human nature, once realized a world lacking in the greatest of social graces, we will scamper the earth trying to gain back that which we once held true. It did not take a few days to dismantle the foundation of respect. It is with generations of human trials and tribulations, that we have lost the highest regard for all around, and respect has been troddened into the garden path instead of respect being given graciously to the gardener, and the plants and the sacred grounds beneath our feet.

We need to treat ourselves as though we belong to the Human Race, and recognize our own beneficial assets to our individual living arrangements. Thus, respect and self-esteem comes from within. We must once again learn and recapture the foundation of positive, courageous and respectful living. We must regain our self respect and believe in ourselves knowing each one of us is a viable being.

Each of us needs something positive to believe in. Whatever our religion, our race, our family background, no one needs to choose our perspectives or beliefs, nor should they need to show us the "better" way of living.

We all have instinctive responses to positive and negative.We all know the difference between wrong and right, good and evil. Even those that grow up knowing only negative influences, there is still the "little voice" inside that nags at that those guilt feelings each of us suffers with when we do something in error. We need to stand behind our personal convictions and beliefs and stay true to our positive instincts.

With this positive outlook comes respect. We believe in our society, respect is almost a forgotten art form. It is as though we need to train our babies, brain wash our children, re-teach the youth in our society, punish into acknowledgement the adults in our midst, just to have each human being know what respecting themselves mean.

Although this is something that should come so naturally to the human race, it is almost as rare as an endangered specie, so many of us send monetary support to every month.

So many of us are child advocates, or bear our weight fighting the government on those destitute and the disabled, yet when it comes to respecting oneself and our beliefs, we shy away and forget that respect is the foothold of social graces and relationships, whether they be family, romantic, or friendships. Respect is the podium of communication between any being, be it animal, human, insect, alien, or plant form.

There is not one living article in the world as we know it that can live unanimously without respect for themselves or the next. They cannot perform to their fullest potential without it, yet as humans, the living thing that is said to have the highest intellect, ignores the most innocent and intuitive aspect of our daily lives and demands it from every avenue of its daily life.

Every minute of every day, each one of us expects, requests and some demand respect from every person, animal, plant, or other living article. It seems we have changed the natural aspect of life's truest gift and turned it into something bought, or won or demanded, when it could be shared so easily.

Is it the Baby Boomers, or the "me" generation, or the TV sitter times, or the solitary computer living that has brought respect from a intuitive aspect of our lives, to a degraded and forgotten endangered emotion?

Perhaps, we all need to respect ourselves a little more, respect others a whole lot more, respect the property of others even more and learn to respect those with respect.

After much thought, perhaps there isn't a whole lot Canada needs to improve. With respect put back into perspective, Canada would be a Nation all on it's own, with different values of the world and a safe harbor for those who respect their Country.

Cathie - Vittoria, Ontario