Water: The promise of hope and renewal

I was watching Yann Arthus-Bertrand's documentary, "Home" last Sunday with the fiancé (I have to get used to not saying boyfriend!) and was particularly moved by the part of the film which talked about the earth's water cycle.

"The Earth's water cycle is a process of constant renewal.

Waterfalls, water vapor, clouds, rain, springs, rivers, seas, oceans, glaciers... The cycle is never broken.

There's always the same quantity of water on Earth.

All the successive species on Earth have drunk the same water.

The astonishing matter that is water.

One of the most unstable of all.

It takes a liquid form as running water, gaseous as vapor, or solid as ice.

In Siberia, the frozen surfaces of the lakes in winter contain the trace of the forces that water deploys when it freezes.

Lighter than water, the ice floats.

It forms a protective mantle against the cold, under which life can go on.

The engine of life is linkage.

Everything is linked.

Nothing is self-sufficient.

Water and air are inseparable, united in life and for our life on Earth.

Sharing is everything.

Our Earth relies on a balance, in which every being has a role to play and exists only through the existence of another being.

A subtle, fragile harmony that is easily shattered."

As Malaysia faces an onslaught of drought coupled with haze due to forest fires, and having gone two weeks without water at home, I was struck by how much we take this simple privilege of running water for granted. In the past week, my eczema and sinuses have flared up all over again, leaving me desperate for rain to come again soon. The word "drought" seems far too primitive for a modernised, connected city like Kuala Lumpur - and yet if I pause long enough from my high-speed urban lifestyle it hits me that the lack of water is in fact an everyday reality for so many other countries. In fact, those who have less of it probably know how to value it more and use it more efficiently.

For me, lack of water is an inconvenience - maybe even a pain. For others, it's a matter of life an death. Almost 770 million people around the world do not have safe, clean water to drink. 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a proper toilet. And every day, 1,400 children die from diseases directly linked to unsafe water or a lack of basic sanitation facilities.

The news that this water rationing will continue for another whole month and that our dams are just slightly above 40% water levels (below 40% is considered critical) almost seem straight out of a novel or a newspaper archive. With choices and conveniences just a click away, it seems so out of place that our modern, high-tech society can be brought to a halt by the absence of something so simple and often overlooked as water.

But nature humbles us in that way. Be it snowstorms, thunderstorms, sandstorms, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, hail, drought, famine, epidemics - nature puts us in our place and reminds us where we stand in the grand scheme of things. It shows us that our self-centered perspectives of the world are merely illusions and we are so, so fragile. So connected to the earth in billions of intricate ways, most of which we have only the faintest idea of. And when we don't care for the environment around us like we should, we pay the price.

Forest fires are not natural. Vanishing rainforests are not natural. Rivers that stop flowing into the sea are not natural. Depleting mineral and precious metal reserves are not natural. They are the result of greed, self-centredness and arrogance, each generation before thinking they were the center of the universe, that resources were unlimited, without ever stopping to think there might not be any left for the generations to come. It breaks my heart to think about all the diverse species of flora and fauna that have been wiped off the face of the earth completely - whichever theory you subscribe to, either species that were so painstakingly and artfully crafted by a master craftsman, or species that fought long and hard to change, grow, adapt and survive in order to become what they were.

Sometimes I wonder how we can undo the damage we've done. What can a few hippie tree huggers with a bunch of signed petitions and slogans do to change the way businesses operate for economic profit or to change the tide of endless consumerism, the quest for more and more material wealth? Thinking about it all makes one feel very, very small in the scale of things.

But water teaches me the important lesson that life is a cycle of renewal. And renewal simply means restoring things back to their original, untainted state. With every sunrise, new season and every rainfall, comes the promise and hope of final, and ultimate renewal. A day when all the damage we've wreaked on the world will be erased once and for all, and we will see life as it always should have been from the start. In seasons like this, my soul aches and longs for that day to come. 

Be the change you want to see in the world

One passion I have developed in recent years is environmental sustainability, sparked by a growing awareness of environmental issues. This awareness came from a variety of sources, including:

• Writing and researching for a monthly environmental column in a magazine I used to work at;
• Working on my company’s sustainability report as a trainee last year;
• The movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’;
• The sprouting of community and church environmental efforts around me;
• Working on a business proposal for an environmental website as part of a university project;
• Various prominent awareness campaigns including Earth Hour and The Plastiki Expedition; and
• Amazing environmentalist friends like Naz, who runs Green-Eyed Monster Blog.

All the above ruined my blissful ignorance of the state of our world. Life would never be the same again. Learning about a floating rubbish patch in the Pacific Ocean comprising mostly non-biodegradable plastic that spans an area the size of Texas and keeps growing because we keep producing plastic, looking at images of beautiful marine life trapped in discarded plastic rings or covered in thick oil, and watching, with my own eyes, coral reefs diminishing each time I revisit Malaysia’s East coast islands since I first started snorkeling as a child… is nothing short of heart-wrenching.

I realize, though, that I don’t talk about this passion enough, perhaps because I am averse to preaching without practicing, and I’ve always felt I was simply not doing enough.

Nobody needs to hear another overbearing sermon about how the earth’s resources are limited and we need to take care of it or risk harming ourselves and future generations. But we see the signs of human greed and irresponsibility everywhere, choking beauty and littering our streets. We know, intuitively, that there must be some better way to live. We know we could use some change.

I’ve long been inspired by Ghandi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I want to change. I want to talk about things that matter to me – but first, I want to be able to do something about those things before I talk about them. To do that, I need to realize that in the long run, small things matter.

This week, I started with the simplest of steps – finding a box to recycle paper at home. Hopefully, in addition to reducing my environmental impact, that box will serve as a visual reminder to use paper (and the rest of my resources) sparingly and generate some extra income for the people involved in the recycling process.

I have also started reading ‘Walking Gently on the Earth: Making Faithful Choices About Food, Energy, Shelter and More’, a thoughtful book that reflects on how we can make wiser, better, intentional, more beneficial choices about living our lives in a way that allows us and our earth to flourish. Hopefully this book will shed light on more ways we can take care of the earth we live on and ultimately, take better care of ourselves.

Another particular area in which I want to challenge myself is to eat less meat. If you would do one thing and one thing only to reduce your impact on the environment, it would be to eat less meat. Nothing else, not even transportation or energy production, causes as much carbon emissions as the meat industry.

I love my meat. Thanks to the effectiveness of diets such as The Zone and The South Beach Diet, which promote eating generously as a whole but consuming more protein and minimal carbs, I am a serial meat eater. But benefitting myself at the detriment of others – I hardly consider that a benefit at all.

I don't have a defined action plan, but if I can skip meat starting with a day a week, to perhaps every alternate day, that's a good start!

I'll close with a challenge, inspired by a witty tee shirt slogan I've been seeing people sport lately - "Everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change."

What do you want to see change in our world? What's ONE thing you can do differently to be a part of that change today? This week? This year?