Imagining a life without conflict could be considered as dreaming of the impossible. I mean, we are forced to move on through the many rites of passage generations and generations of our families have created, without a chance for change. That is the way things are, everything else is scary and not worth risking our safety for. This leaves us with little to no hope for achieving internal peace, unless we follow the norm, and It's this way of looking at life, as if it was a scheduled "adventure", which has us so lost that we can't distinguished the real challenges, in fact we simply confuse them with crazy feats, impossible acts, coincidences, or we tag those who venture outside the norm as outcasts and misfits. We escape from conflict, we escape at the chance of failure, most often because we are scared of admitting we are the problem, so we try winning and winning no matter the cost. After all, no one can deny us when we are at the top.
We are so high that we can't see anymore, we are blind to our surroundings and our influence on them, we contaminate, we consume, we burn and burn, we stomp and stomp, we cut through forests, hunt through populations and drive over nature like we own it. Like we'll be the last ones to live in this planet, like everything we do will be fixed by the next generation. Well guess what? We might as well be the last generation. Maybe looking down at the abysm will make us turn around and fixed the road we took. Maybe it's in this, soon to be, millennial ruled world that change needs a boost. It is in this times where change needs to spread and things ought to be improved from the bottom up. I'm not saying it's too late, but it's definitely about time.
Confusion reigns in my head when my decisions are based in safety parameters imposed sometimes by even my own family. I grinned my teeth just from thinking about looking up the answer to the problems I don't understand, just because I have a deadline, and also a million problems. I struggle living in a world where everything is given to me, cause I get used to it and it's easy. I thought this life was about looking for the one thing that would beat my feet, tear my hands and fill my heart, not the one that would drain my mind, kill my imagination and fill my wallet. But then again that's just a child speaking. You can't live without money, but you can with just enough.
I mean it wouldn't be a "comfortable" life, eating just enough and not filling our stomachs, no sweet treats in the weekend--like the cookies I'm eating as I write this--buying what we need and not what we want. Growing our food and living off the land. Comfort might be a simple matter of opinion, but isn't better to be at peace than at ease?
Living in self-sufficient cities, consuming in accordance with the earth's production capacity and sharing what we have. Sounds like an utopian world doesn't it? Even though at one point it might have been like that, we are far away from it now and I don't think rejecting progress is a good idea. Jumping from where we are to a "Green" world is not only impossible but also unpractical. Do not let this mentality of having everything at hands reach, this consuming mindset that plagues our society, this habit of things being given to us, convince you that the solution needs to be radical, needs to be effective and needs to happen quick. Because it will never be like that.
Once again is up to us, the children of the earth and oceans. Is not our parents or grandparents anymore--but don't dare making the mistake of ignoring them--is not our kids yet, is us; millennials, or however you want to call us. We are the ones graduating, and entering the real world, we are the ones taking into real world issues and responsibilities for the first time, but more than anything we are the ones blessed with the the last years of a somewhat technology free world. We are the last generation of kids that got to play outside, that got to explore this world with our own feet instead of through a screen. The last generation to still be "unused" to the easiness of today's world.
So it's time to listen to what the old ones have to tell us, they know what the world used to look like and how it looks now, but we can't expect them to keep fixing the mistakes of all of us. We need to take on the task, that has been passed ever since the world began; to take care of what we have. People have been warning us about this problems for awhile now, maybe it's finally time to stop trying to make a broken system work, once in for all. It's time to stop ourselves, us, the common folk, because the ones sitting at the top of the corporate ladder will not stop us from jumping into the abysm--hell, they'll probably charge us a fee for doing it.
Help me take this blinders off, the same ones that I've been carrying since who knows when. I don't want to die for that finish line, I want to run the race and look at the views I have on both sides, take it all in and never look away. I'll cross that line eventually, I know that for sure, but I want to make this race my own, by sharing it with everyone around me.
Yes, some things have to change and no, not everything is wrong. Nobody's perfect and the world is a very messed up place, just like it has always been. Life is hard and it should be, otherwise happiness wouldn't be such a special feeling, one that comes from hardships and gets sculpt by moral discipline until it becomes our biggest weapon against the evils of our own mind.
Change is not bad, the seasons change, the new becomes old, species evolve or perish, and that's a fact. We can actually change, it's possible, I don't think we realize that, but you can't set out to change the world. No, you can't change people's minds, they won't listen, so just focus on yourself, start the movement from the bottom of your heart and soul. Being scared is alright, just don't panic, conflict will come so just hold on tight cause it will pass.
For all we have is all that's left, appreciation for the little things that make our days brighter is the only thing that will keep the spirit of adventure alive. To lead by example is the only way to change people's minds, to change the focus of this life and stop treating this land we were allowed to use as if it was ours to exploit. We all share this space even though we often forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ezkp7Cteys
