 Z is for zeitgeist, the spirit and mood of a particular period of history is defined by the ideas and beliefs of the time. Why is for yesterday? For in order to understand the beliefs and mood of the time we must pause, gaze back on the road we have trodden, pray we do not become pillars of salt. X is how we sign our names now as none of us wants to admit we had anything to do with how we got here. For the world that we were gifted grows weary of the waste we have laid upon her. When did we forsake the wisdom of living within our means for the worship of whatever is cheap and easy? We have been suffering from a vicious lack of vision as if we were living in a vacuum we have vampires who have taken to tapping our own veins and we are in desperate need of a U-turn. For the times they are a-changing at an exponential rate we speak of S for sacrifices if by simplifying our lives we have so much to lose yet we fail to R for realize just how much we have to lose. It's not a question of qualification should we put a man upon the moon yet we are but blades of grass hanging out over the edge of a precipice inching closer to the edge oblivious the soil in which we have trusted our roots grows ever thinner by the year. N is for my nana who never wasted a single thing in her life. MLK for the glass milk bottles we used to put out at the gate. J is for jars of homemade jam while I, I is for the irony that these days quarrying the stone, grinding the sand, melting the glass, smoothing the jar, cooking the jam, adding flavoring one-two-form preservative two-six-two, boxing, pecking, wrapping, shipping containers across the sea only to unwrap, unpack, unbox, restock, supermarket shelves. Well that seemed like a simpler option than just making a batch of jam. My inner cynic says that H is for hopeless we are already too late to the table but my inner child is always looking for ways that she can help so the only compromise that I can find is that H is for the humility and G is for the grace it takes to admit that we were wrong. So F is not for failure but for forgiveness. We need to be kind to ourselves. Litigation's promise is bittersweet and all the best futures are carved upon a clean slate. So let's E for evaluate, eliminate this dogma we have built. Let's stage a departure from this zeitgeist, from this culture of convenience, this cancer of consumption. We don't have another option. See there is no planet B and next time round we're going to need straight A's. Kia ora.