Il Faut Cultiver Notre Jardin

You stop reading newspapers (and watching TV) and suddenly the people who run the world retreat into the distance. And the concerns, issues, distractions they promote fade away. You have lowered the telescope- and are seeing things in their proper proportions. You stop worrying about things you can't change and thinking more about the things you can.

Our immediate business is with the near-to, not the far-away. To think otherwise is imperialism- and no-one loves a foreign ruler. My neighbour is answerable to their own gods, not to mine. To build on Voltaire, if we all concentrated on cultivating our gardens- and stopped eyeing the garden next door- or fussing about that horribly untidy one on the other side of town- the world would soon become beautiful.