Robert Muller: [GMW #2225] The Cleanest Mile On Earth

Sunday, May 29, 2011

[GMW #2225] The Cleanest Mile On Earth

Idea Dream - Robert Muller's Ideas 1001 to 1500

From The Third five Hundred Ideas And Dreams
For A Better World - ANNEX

The Cleanest Mile on Earth

One must never miss fulfilling one's dreams

Shortly after World War II during which I had witnessed and suffered so many horrors, I was lucky to be selected as one of the first United Nations interns at Lake Success, Long Island, where the UN started in an abandoned war factory. As a Frenchman coming from the beautiful region of Alsace-Lorraine, I did not like New York City and its skyscrapers, and I did not like overcrowded Long Island. After my internship I took a trip by train to Canada where I wanted to visit indigenous people of whom I had dreamt when I was a child. The train followed many miles the beautiful Hudson Valley. As I looked out of the window, I said to myself: "If fate ever wants me to work for the United Nations, I would select one of the beautiful little villages along this river to live in."

Fate fulfilled my dream. I was hired as a permanent official of the UN which moved to Manhattan. I married another intern, from Chile, who had come to the United Nations to fight for women's rights. I remembered my dream to live in one of the villages in the Hudson Valley and we selected a garden apartment in the beautiful and peaceful village of Dobbs Ferry. Years later, when we inherited some money from our deceased parents, we bought a house with an acre of land in the neighboring village of Ardsley, where we moved with our four children and lived happily until my retirement from the United Nations four decades later.

From our house in Ardsley I liked to walk to the train station on the bank of the Hudson River. It was a beautiful walk, about a mile long. In the 1960s I began to notice a lot of fresh trash along the road. It was the period of "keeping up to the Joneses" when the ideal of many Americans was to have a big flashy car with fins, the latest model of course, and to drive to the station with a big cigar in the mouth, throwing trash out of the window. I decided to do something about it. I took a bag along with me and progressively picked up the trash. My neighbors stopped their car when they saw me, and commented: "Mr. Muller, you are wasting your time. You will never win. There will always be new trash."

Well, they were wrong. I discovered that once the trash has been removed, there is little additional trash, and there is no difficulty in keeping a road clean. The only time when more efforts are needed is in spring after the snow has melted. The battle-ship cars and the cigars later began to disappear, and people became more concerned about pollution of the environment. For years I could gladly note that I had won my tiny battle and was walking every day on the cleanest mile on Earth.

Robert's The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living,
Volume II Chapter 5 - Of Love
"I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever... In one day, one hour, everything could be arranged at once. The chief thing is love." -- Dostoevski

UN News Sources - UN Chronicle, United Nations News Service , UN Wire News Archive
References: Earth Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Rights of: Children, Women, Indigenous People
To Be Written: Rights of Nature, Birds, Animals, Fish, etc.

DailyGood

If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.

- Joseph Campbell -

Where Poetry Comes From

"I think poetry always comes out of what you don't know. And with students I say, knowledge is very important. Learn languages. Read history. Read, listen, above all, listen to everybody. Listen to everything that you hear. Every sound in the street. Every bird and every dog and everything that you hear. But know all of your knowledge is important, but your knowledge will never make anything. It will help you to form the things, but what makes something is something that you will never know. It comes out of you. It's who you are." Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin reflects with Bill Moyers on language, his writing process, the natural world, and the insights gleaned from a much-lauded career of more than 50 years. { read more }

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Books recommended by Robert are here.
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