Living Justly or Just Living?

Are we living justly or are we just living? Have we gone through this class saying that were going to try to make a difference or are we really going to try? If we are going to try, are we going to try consistently or are we going to try when someone needs us? I can’t answer for everyone in the class but we all have to figure this all out ourselves. There is one thing that I can say about the people in this class is that something has changed in the way we view food and the community. The thing we all need to ask ourselves is: are we going to act on what we say or we just going to sit around while knowing exactly what to do to make a difference?

No one in this class is a bad person; we are all genuinely good people. But doing absolutely nothing with what we learned is exactly what Kidder describes as people who are not meeting expectations. “It's like a guy on our own team, a nice guy, who said he would help with a water project in a town here, but only if the people really showed they wanted it” (291). We seriously need to do something with the information that we have learned from this class because there are a lot of people that don’t know anything about nutrition, community building with food, and eating locally. We have always stressed that there needs to some sort of education for people about what we learned in this class. So why don’t we just start by telling people (people we know for starters) about the things we have learned. Is that not going to make a difference in someone’s life?

Now I know I’m writing about how we should be doing things but I’m definitely not doing as much as I could. All I’m doing right now is informing people about what I’ve been learning in this class with my family and some friends. Sometimes I’ll get the occasional “I don’t care” but sometimes I’ll get a “really? Wow!” and it makes things easier for me to tell people about random facts about community and food. But I know I can do more, I receive emails from Marin Organic but I can never show up because I’m busy with my own personal life. I need to step up but I’m doing what I can. I’m trying my best to live justly not just live.