Sugar Coating Realities

When any problems arises, I find that we like to go play dodge ball, escape from being hit in the face or anywhere of pain or troubles of dealing with it. We eat, drink, smoke, or buy our mind away from the core of our solution. We sugar coat things and cover it up until, we believe that it is the truth and we can not change, the circumstance is our karma and our real way is far away. But does sugar coating a good solution? The problem eventually will catch up and come back to us circling around until we make choices that will end the spinning.

I just read an powerful article about the state our home planet with David Suzuki and Swami Sivananda. Even DS isn't too optimistic about the future of the planet. He says that what we are facing is at a scale that is "well beyond anything that we had been involved with in the past." We are acting too slowly? What can we do?

They talked about evolution and man's ability to "foresight" natural disasters and preventing them. Humans are inventive, intelligent and have the ability to realize that the future can be affected by the present. In the past, when we believe a drought was soon to come, we would prepared and put grains away. The human race has survived and grown to become the dominant animal on the planet because of foresight. The future depends on "Foresight." Why is it now that we have lost our foresight in modern times? With increased of scientist, engineers with the masses of computers and global telecommunication, we are still in a dream? When Hurricane Katrina came, we knew and we waited. We had warnings but still, there were lots of suffering, pain, injuries, and death. If we can prevent, would we? There were other hurricanes to come and it seems to increase each year. Perhaps, we can make good scientific guesses to why climate is chaotic?

DS said that people have to lived "within what anthropologists call the worldview". We have to know that everything is connected to everything and there is full significance and repercussions. That reminds me of grandma's words to finishing all food on my plate. As I child, I could not understand the full meaning but only if the food was good, it was gone in my tummy and if it was not my taste, it was a task of a million chews but no swallows. It is until a Dharma talk in Canada that I realized the full connection between the food on my plate and all the conditions and connections that allow food to be on my plate from the seed to soil, to water to sunshine, to nurture and care to farmer, to merchant to store to home to plate. There were so many factors before the food was able to be on my plate. There are many invisible threads that we often forget about. Have we lost the power to see that the planet and ourselves are a single entity? "We've moved to cities and we think the economy is what gives us our life, that if the economy is strong we can afford garbage collection and sewage disposal and fresh food and water and electricity. We go through life thinking that money is the key to having whatever we want, without regard to what it does to the rest of the world."

A sour feeling of a lemon lingered up to my throat. My eyes felt irritable uncomfortable and there was tightness in my heart. "With literally hundreds of thousands of species going extinct in a lifetime - over 90% big fish.." and already added 32% more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than 150 years ago. There isn't any way we can sugarcoat the reality.. " But people are on a sugar high. Bigger disasters will happen no doubt if we keep this up. Our way of living, thinking and the way we treat our animals, species, environment and ourselves. We are not living in a igloo.

David Suzuki joined the board of a UN - sponsored group called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. "A largest study of the ecosystem of the planet involving 1300 scientists from 71 countries in the world was completed and released in March 2005 and it was the third page of the Globe and Mail." And when the Pope was in hospital, it was pushed off the news. The report was in the paper for ONLY A DAY! For me, there is a great sense of sadness because our element of foresight is so far from us :( People are more attracted to gossip, entertainment, and trivial media things than what is happening with our place of living we called Earth. EARTH = Species = Mankind = Future Generations = Animals = Environment = Air we breath, Water we drink = More Natural disasters = Diseases = Suffering = Pain = Deaths = No me talking to you or You sharing meaningful ideas or Family or Children or Friends or Life.

Swami Sivananda mentioned about a hearing in Alaska in the 1980s and this Eighty year old Inupiaq woman stood up and spoke her thoughts. She is a hero. She said, "It's really too bad that the young people today can't learn from their elders, because if they can't learn from their elders the only other teacher is Nature. And Nature is a very, very severe teacher." I just laugh out loud as I read this. I guess I was laughing at the intelligent of mankind for being the dominant animal on the planet yet the stupidest specie on the planet.

DS talked about his role on TV and how it was a medium for him to communicate science to people and how he was the translator for the public. He thought then that the public would be empowered to act on that.

SS "Did that happen?"

DS: "To my amazement that didn't happen at all." To his surprise, television was a great medium for communication but in another way, it provided lots of gaps for distractions. People can take food breaks, washroom breaks, kid breaks, dog breaks etc. And info is absorbed in bits and pieces.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What do we want your country to be by the year 2030? - A generation from now?

Do we want our country where the air is free of chemicals and we don't have epidemic levels of asthma?

Do we want us to be able to drink the water out of our rivers or lakes?

Perhaps Television gives us too much freedom, when we have too much of anything, there is lack of gratitude, respect, and appreciation. Think about it, there is Only One Earth. You Are One Life, and "The Greatest Power that we have as humans is the Power of Choice." We need to lightening our impact on nature. It begins with US, our way of living, our home, our way of transportation, our vehicles, our food, our products we buy, and our choices.

It was a windswept day, the trees were waving and hairs were flying but with clear skies and sunshine, Ryan and I walked to a neighborhood cafe called "Weeds." It was a community cafe where had his coffee and I enjoyed a great article with David Suzuki and Swami Sivananda in my reading of "Ascent" magazine.

This Could save you.

The David Suzuki Foundation has researched the 10 most effective ways we can help conserve nature and improve our quality of life.

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%.

2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances.

3. Don't use pesticides.

4. Eat meat - free meals one day a week

5. Buy locally grown and produced food.

6. Choose a fuel - efficient vehicle.

7. Choose a home close to work or school.

8. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit.

9. Support alternative transportation.

10. Learn more and share with others.

Empowerment is about Self Empowerment, we are the change, we are the force of change. If we want change, do not expect it from others. Like what Gandhi says, "We've got to be the change we want."

INFO:

Nature Challenge

Climate Change

RetScreen International - clean energy decision support centre