Dear readers,

It strikes me that before we retire, most of us have no time to get involved with the things that we care about because work, family, children, houses and so many more demands which are put upon our time that we hardly get time to sleep properly.  But once we become retired, there is often more time in our lives to give a little thought to those bigger issues that have always troubled us. 

It must be said that whatever our age, 2020 has really taxed our thinking processes with questions about many frightening and depressing matters.  This last year of lockdown has given so many of us so much more time to think.  I know that worrying about family members who have been ill and that I have not been allowed to see; about what will happen to me if I get it, and what will happen if the person I have been depending on to get to the shops for me is unable to carry on, are just a few of the things that have worried me in the past few months. 

Now that we have had a little more freedom to get out, I look back, and those things seem so trivial.  I was so busy worrying about me that every time I saw another news broadcast which told us that the contagion rate had gone up again, I was beginning to have tunnel vision and those depressing thoughts were getting me down. 

I worked out that I was only focussing on the things that affect me and, even after telephone calls from one of my many friends, I would put the phone down and only remember the negative things that were said.

I have written all this because I know that there are probably many other readers who have let their minds do depressing overtime while we have had all this extra time to think.  While we still have a little thinking time left perhaps there are a few things we can do.

I got to thinking that there are so many people in this world who are worse off than even me, and I thought about what I would have done when I was young to promote change for some of them.  Time was, when I would know someone who had started a petition, or at least passed someone in the street who would ask me to add my name to a list which would help to show the people with influence over that issue that a large section of the public disagreed with their handling of it.

There is still a lot of debate about just how much difference petitions really make to such situations and, at worst the answer might just be that more people are made aware of them, but some must result in positive changes that work.

Thinking about other people’s problems has always helped to put yours into perspective and these days’ petitions can be signed online, so I would ask that we spend just a little of that thinking time finding a petition that will help a cause we are concerned about and adding your name to the list.  It is such a little thing to do which can mean quite a lot to the cause and to your own level of positivity.

Or perhaps, start one of your own…

GF, Mottingham.

LPG found some online places where you can leave an online signature or start attracting some from people with similar passionate convictions ….

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… and found a little information to support the success of petitions over the years…

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