It’s a shame what we have done to this planet.
And it’s a bigger shame that we continue to corrupt it every single day, even today.
There is no limit which we have not crossed for our own selfishness, without worrying the least about what impact it will have on the well-being of the planet.
Our vehicles pollute the planet; our air conditioners and heaters pollute the planet; our mindless consumption of plastics and gadgets pollute the planet; our laziness against doing the work ourselves, and instead using some form of technology to do it pollutes the planet.
This is not how things used to be. It’s the mindless inventions that we created, that we spread, and have eventually made a part of our everyday lives, that has made this planet a worse place to live in, than how it was when we came to live in it.
Within hundred years we have caused more damage to the planet than the last ten thousand years.
We live in this planet as if the time for which we live in this planet is all that matters. We have no regard for the future generations at all.
We do everything for our children – we send them to best schools, we give them the best clothes, best food, best gadgets, and the best upbringing too perhaps. But why don’t we ever think of giving them the best place to live in – a cleaner and better planet.
Why don’t we realize that more than any other thing, it’s a breath of fresh air – the very essence of life – that’s the most important thing they not only need to survive, but also to stay calm.
When you get stuck in a traffic jam and don’t have the AC on, what’s the first thing you notice? Besides the honking from other cars, what you see is that there is so much pollution now. It annoys you to be just stuck in that polluted air. You want to quickly get out of there, so that you can feel the fresh air once again, or at least fresher air than what you can breathe while stuck in the traffic.
This polluted air, which was once limited to the roads and traffic jams, is spreading now. From the roads, it has started to make its way towards our homes, if not already there. And it’s only a matter of time before it affects us in such ways that we start to act like crazy, if we don’t already do.
For fresh air is the very essence of life. You can’t think with clarity in a polluted environment. The pollution outside you pollutes the thoughts inside you.
If there is chaos outside, if the world is noisy out there, you can’t become peaceful inside, at least not without taking some effort. And this is where the problem lies. We shouldn’t have to take an effort in order to be peaceful. Peace should come naturally to us, and peace can come naturally to us only when the world gives us that environment of peace – no honking of vehicles around, no polluted air around. But that seems like a wishful thinking now.
And the sad part is things are only getting worse.
And we don’t have to look at all the scientific studies to know that; we don’t have to see reports on the changes in the ocean, or the changes in the wildlife, or the changes in vegetation. We can notice the changes in our everyday lives.
You can yourself, especially in bigger cities, notice that the air is no longer as fresh as it was ten or twenty years ago; the roads are no longer as empty as they used to be twenty years ago; the markets are no longer as empty as they used to be twenty years ago; people’s minds are no longer as calm as they used to be twenty years ago – they quickly get annoyed at the tiniest of things.
You yourself get easily annoyed now if the tiniest of things changes around you. The mall changes where they keep groceries or any of your favorite brand of products, you get annoyed. The milkman or food delivery guy shows up a little late, you get annoyed. Even if your phone app takes a few more seconds to open, you get annoyed.
We are becoming so restless already. Imagine how horrible things will become in future.
Our outside environment is having a negative effect on us like no other time in human history. And everyone continues to live their lives as if everything is alright.
Even the most educated people, even the people with highest intellect, act and live like fools when it comes to the well-being of the planet. Their intellect fails to see how their everyday actions are contributing towards making a worse planet.
Each of us, and that includes you and me, has to take an active step to do something about it. No one is telling you to dedicate all your life to change the planet, but let’s do what we can do at our individual level to make it better.
Let us not be the ones at least who contribute towards its corruption. And let us do our tiny bit of living more consciously, and acting more consciously than what we do now.
I myself am no Saint, and I realized this only 19 years ago, while I was reading a book called as “Food for the thinking mind” by a Buddhist monk, and after I reflected upon it. And that changed my perspective about how I need to act, so that I can cause the least damage to the planet, and at the same time do anything good if I can. And so I made some changes in my lifestyle.
I don’t drive any vehicle. I myself don’t even own one – various other family members do though. Anything under 2-3 miles and I go by walk. I never take or rent any vehicle for it.
Whether it’s groceries, or vegetables, or the flour mill, or going to the post or to the pharmacist, or practically to get any thing that we need to run our everyday lives, I do it by walk, and I carry things in my hands. Of course that means multiple trips to the market within a week, so I do all these chores every few days and carry all these things in both my hands while returning.
And I water all the plants in our garden every day without fail, except for Sundays to give them a break from excessive water. And only after I have offered water to all plants, do I eat myself. It’s a thing I stick to always.
And if anything comes in a plastic or any bag, I save it after use, clean it and store it, and use it again and again, and recycle it as much as I can. Of course, the first thing is I always carry cloth bags with me, and try to avoid getting things in plastic bags in the first place if possible.
And I use all my gadgets as long as they work and not become unusable. For example, even today I am typing this article on a 15-16 year old computer – though I must admit it desperately needs an upgrade as it can stop working anytime. I used my last smartphone for six-and-half years before I got a new one, and that too only because it stopped working properly. And I can say the same thing about all other electronic items that we have – our non-smart television, the twelve-year old bluetooth speaker that I got to listen to devotional songs every now and then.
I don’t buy things just because something better is available out there. I am patient enough to use all these gadgets, or whatever, as long as they do the job for me – even if I have to wait few seconds, or minutes, while using them.
These are just few things that I can think off of the top of my mind, that I do to do my little towards making a better planet, or as is the case with electronic gadgets, to cause as little damage to it as I possibly can. Even the articles that I write for you here, I write using ink pens and not ballpoints, and by refilling inks in the same pens again and again using glass ink bottles; so I don’t have to throw away a ballpoint pen, or discard the plastic refill after use.
The point is, you and I can make such little changes to our life, and that, too, will have an impact on the well-being of the planet.
Every little bit counts. Every little bit helps. If you go to get your groceries today by walk, instead of taking your car, it helps. If you carry your own bags, and can reduce your intake of plastic bags even by one or two, it helps.
If you go by walk to the nearby restaurant to get food, and avoid vehicle delivery, it helps. If you use your smartphone one more year, and don’t upgrade it, it helps. If you stop using air conditioners permanently (as I do. I always keep windows open in my house. And those rare times I do take a taxi/car I keep the windows open there as well, and don’t use the AC), it helps.
If you stop using electric water heaters (I bath with cold tap water even in winter, though I won’t recommend it to people living in extreme cold temperatures, or if it affects their health), it helps.
If you plant a little plant in your garden, or your balcony, and water it regularly, it helps. If you switch off the light, the fan, while you leave the room, it helps. If you use water without wasting it, and avoid unnecessarily keeping the tap open, it helps.
There are so many things – so many little things – that you and I can do in our everyday lives to live more consciously, to act more consciously towards the well-being of the planet.
There is mindless consumerism, mindless wastage of resources, that’s happening at a global level. And we can only bring a change in it if we change things at our individual level.
Blaming so and so won’t solve the problem; doing something, no matter how little, will solve the problem, or at least move us towards being a solution to the problem.
I don’t know where you live, what you do, but what I do know is, if you take a mindful look, a conscious look, at all that you do or consume every day, you will see that there are opportunities for you to change things in your life which can also create a positive impact on the planet, or, at the least, create as little negative impact on it as possible.
We can do it. We must do it. Because if we don’t, then our future generations will live in the worst place in the universe they could possibly live. They will hold us responsible for turning a beautiful planet into a horrible one. They will blame us for turning fresh air into polluted one, greenery into dry land, thriving wildlife into extinct wildlife, causing extreme temperatures, melting of glaciers, causing floods and droughts and what not; turning quietness into chaos, turning natural and soulful beauty into artificial and soulless one.
What will we have to say to them then? If they ask us why did we do it, what will we say? That we were too greedy; we only thought about our own comforts; we wanted to have as many things as we can without the least regard for if there will be enough left for others in the future; we invented things only to make our lives easier even if our inventions destroyed the planet; we were so foolish and ignorant that we didn’t have the basic common sense to see what harm we were causing to the planet all the time.
Our stupidity, our selfishness, will make every life on the planet suffer, be it human or whatever. Every plant, every animal, every microorganism, that’s essential for the life on this planet, will suffer. Instead of being a heaven, which our mother earth once was, it will become a hell to live in, for no fault of her own, but because of the greed and limitless selfishness of all her human children.
This has to stop. This plundering and raping of the very planet, which gives us everything selflessly, and whom we have looted and corrupted and destroyed endlessly, has to stop. Otherwise there won’t be any forgiveness for us.
No God can forgive that human whose actions cause suffering to other beings. We are supposed to be the caretaker of this planet. When did we become its destroyer? We were supposed to take care of all our inferior conscious animals and plants. When did we turn into their biggest enemy?
There was a time when we were afraid of wildlife. Today, we are the biggest threat to all the wildlife on the planet. It’s not the lions who destroy the jungle anymore; it’s not the sharks who destroy the oceans; it’s not the eagles who destroy the sky. It’s us humans who have become the biggest predator of them all on this planet.
And we are the worst kind of predators this world could have, because we don’t just kill for food, we don’t just kill for necessities, but we kill for pleasure and for our boundless selfishness.
And we don’t kill a particular prey, at a particular place. We kill everything everywhere. We destroy everything everywhere. We destroy jungles, we destroy rivers and oceans, we destroy the sky, and if all that’s not enough, we drill holes throughout the planet, and even take everything out of its very core, out of what the planet itself is made up. Can we as humanity be more stupid than that?
We destroy the very home – our only home, our only planet – from inside and outside, every day, throughout the day, and we expect that things will be alright in future?
We are raping the present in all possible ways that we can, and we expect the future to be nice and beautiful? Do we ever think how much time and effort and energy it will take for the planet to heal herself, even if we were to stop today, or worse, if we didn’t stop today?
We have already done irreparable damage to the planet. Let’s not destroy whatever we still are lucky to have left. Let us not act as if we own each and every thing in this planet, each and every resource in this planet, each and every other life-form in this planet.
The planet exists, and must exist, for the growth of every life-form on the planet, and not just for the growth of humans alone. All the resources in it exist for the benefit of all life-forms, and not just for humans alone.
We need to relearn to share what all we have on this planet, with all the life-forms on the planet. Because by taking away the trees, taking away the mountains, taking away the fresh water from everywhere, we are leaving less and less for other life-forms on the planet.
Some of the life-forms and animals and plants, have already started to go extinct. If we don’t act on it today, it’s only a matter of time before they all do.
And then it will be our turn.