tiptoe thru rain drops.

Well it IS raining today.

I've been pondering as I often do. I spend way too much time on it occasionally.
But nevertheless, here is what I'm wondering today....How do you find a fine balance between the need to seek and/or create some kind of beauty in your life and the feeling that you should give some of your time and energy to actively making the world a better place. I realize there are some very subjective statements there but I think for the purpose of argument I can leave them. I mean, really. How do you figure this stuff out?

I know intrinsically that creation and an appreciation of creation keeps the gears oiled. But since we seem to be living in such a volatile time, exacerbated by the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" it seems important to work towards peace and quality of life. I am not entirely sure how to do this. I try to take some action online politically when an opportunity presents itself, I try to speak up, clearly and honestly when narrow mindedness is blatant in my midst. I genuinely try to count my blessings, which sometimes has the undesirable effect of reminding me how little some folks have but...I still try. I genuinely make an effort to be a good human being. Its not routinely easy. I try never to lie. It keeps life simpler. I don't have very good short term memory so if I were to lie in layers or anything I would soon get caught in my own web.

But I seem to digress. Maybe the short question here is this: is it fair or correct or appropriate to plan to just take all your time to wrestle beauty from pathos? Is it practical to spend my time in a selfish quest to create stuff? Wether its writing or collage or a quest for an elusive personal aesthetic? How will that promote goodwill towards humanity? How will it slow global warming? How will it end hunger? How will it patch the hole in the ozone layer? How will it improve our education system? How will it stop the unnecessary slaughter of wildlife? How will it rescue our oceans? I could go on and on and on? I think I really need an answer to this...even if its not the "right" answer.