Dear LPG readers,

I have a question for you.  Do you remember when you thought you could change the world?  If you think back to your dark and distant past, can you remember doing anything that showed the people around you that you wanted to stand up for an ideal.

I was a teenager of the 1960s and I thought I could change the world when I was a student.  I took part in marches and signed petitions to help all sorts of causes.    I did organise walks and demonstrations, and was not afraid to write letters to the authorities when I thought something was unjust, and I know so many of us felt the same back then.  But then we get involved with working and families and we stop fighting for what we believe in and focus on our children, work, homes and how to afford them.

By the time we are ready to retire, all the things we have spent years planning often take up all our time and, by the time we get back to remembering those ideals which we once felt were important, we still adopt the attitude of conviction but the will to fight becomes overturned by a sort of weariness that limits our battles to a discussion or two with a couple of friends. 

What we have all been through over the past year, and what we are still going through, has also taken a great personal toll on our lives, but I know that from time to time when I am talking on the phone to people that have become closer friends because of the many phone calls which I know have kept many a person who has been locked down grounded, some of those mini discussions still become part of the conversation.

I have learnt so much more about so many people through those telephone calls and video chats which kept us sane during lockdown and, while we have celebrated and commiserated when hearing each other’s good and bad news, learned about some of each other’s family issues and worried about mutual friends, I know that I have spent quite a lot of time talking about the bigger issues that worry me today.

I think that we all have something that we would like to change; I am talking about anything from the aspects of the personal, moral, social and political injustices to some small aspect of the way that your local club was being run before everything was ‘closed down’. Sometimes these things will directly affect us, but often we are worried about the effect they will have on our children, grandchildren or friends.

Thinking and talking about such issues is not a bad thing, but I have so often heard people say, ‘but what can I do about it?’  I would just like to remind readers that no matter how old they are, or how unimportant they think that their issue is, they still have a voice and, while it is good to talk to friends about what bothers them, we often forget to get that message to the authorities that can change them.

This is one of the things that we at LPG are here for. We don’t expect any reader to be able to write their thoughts down electronically just because you can access the internet, which is why we are here to do the writing for you so that whatever you think needs changing gets heard by a wider audience.

Leave us an email or contact us by phone so that we can let a few more people know what you are thinking and, have you noticed, we will not print any author’s name unless requested.

We think that the thought is the most important thing; not knowing who the thinker is…

Maureen Bishop

for LPG

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