I love sitting outside our new home with my Mom. After living 20 years in Florida our New York rural backyard is quite the change of scenery for her. She often asks me the names of our trees and plants. Although, I haven’t had much time to explore our new land, I am able to answer most of her questions along with adding some interesting details. She always seems amazed and asks me how I know all these things. My simple answer, “We learn what we love.” Basically, I have been exploring the natural world as far back as I can remember. Perhaps, she just thought I was simply playing in the backyard as a child, but it went deeper than that. I would observe how the seasons and land changed and what happened to the critters as they go through metamorphosis in our little brook behind our house. I was very curious about everything in the woods and was fortunate to grow up on over 2 acres of forested land in suburbia.
When I was little we went to the Bronx Zoo, and remember reading a poem by a Senegalese conservationist that was engraved into a stone wall.
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”― Baba Dioum
The quote resonated with me and has stayed with me ever since. I love learning about the natural world, and, I’ve always tried my best to conserve all its wonderful resources. Simply put, I feel at home, at peace in the natural world ~ understanding the flow and connections is down right thrilling for me. The experience centers me. When I go too long without a pause in nature, I can feel its absence deep inside, like my soul screaming for relief. The simple antidote ~ walk outside, hug a tree, and be with the natural world. Some days it may be more challenging to steal a moment from my daily tasks but I try my best to not go too long without it.
I think it is so important to find out what we enjoy in life and pursue it. Yes, we all need to make a living and can’t always support ourselves by pursuing our passions. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that our passions can’t be part of our lives. Some lucky souls may have the good fortune to pursue their passion everyday, while there is always evenings, weekends or time after retirement for everyone else. Regardless, we must all explore life and find joy, whatever it may be.
Sunday morning, September 21, 2014 at 4:55am, I boarded a bus at Cornell University to head down to NYC to participate in the People’s Climate March. I went by myself but met up with one of my oldest and dearest friends in NYC. On the bus, we were asked to tell everyone our name, where we were from and why we were going down. I sat at the front of the bus and didn’t really give much thought to my answers ~ hey it was very early in the morning ~ so I gave the routine answers: My name is Debbie, I’m from Trumansburg and I wanted to be part of the solution. However, since then, I have given these questions a great deal of thought.
Regardless of how much time and thought I have put into it, the answer to the first question has remained the same. My name is Debbie; I like it and feel no need to change it. However, the answers to the next two questions have given me pause. I am from Planet Earth, in fact, I have always felt this way since I was a small child. At six, I was known to walk into neighbor’s houses and help myself to food or just make myself at home. I really saw no boundaries ~ everywhere was my home. That is one reason why I love to travel: I need to check out my home and meet all the Earth’s amazing inhabitants. Some people see their house and family as their home; or their town; or state or country. I simply have a broader viewpoint.
Now this brings us to the third and final question. Yes, it is true that I want and desire to be part of the solution but it goes much deeper than that. Most people feel a need to take care of their family and their community. I see everyone on the planet as part of my community. That is why I find it so important that we must take care of each other in order to survive and better yet thrive. We live on and in a closed system; whatever we do will affect everyone and everything on our planet. To me it is plain and simple. Years ago, when I worked in an office, I offered a ceramic mug to a coworker who used lots of Styrofoam cups. She told me that, “it was NONE OF MY BUSINESS, IT DOES NOT AFFECT YOU!” Well, I corrected her; it was my business and did indeed affect me and everyone on this planet. Her Styrofoam cups were polluting my home and will for a very long time. When I was a waitress, my boss had to explain to me that I could not give customers ceramic mugs when they requested Styrofoam even if they were going to simply drink their coffee in the restaurant. I still don’t understand but regretfully have become more passive or at least accepting over the years. I am less aggressive with my message in hope of leading people to see how their actions could negatively impact themselves, their family and all of us. When I was young, I was idealistic and aggressive when trying to deliver my message, people tended to shut down so my message was never was received ~ that was never my goal. Over the years, I’ve slowly learned how to deliver the same message but in a more palatable way.
That’s one of my favorite guys in the world. “Her” would be me 🙂
Although, I am a rather conservative person and try to take only what I need, create the least amount of waste and really try to leave our Earth healthier than when I arrived in 1965. I am definitely not an activist. The People’s Climate March was actually one of my first marches. It was so wonderful to be surrounded by idealistic, articulate and powerful people that really do care. A woman in her 80s told me she was surprised to see so many young people, she thought they didn’t care. Well at least over 400,000 people cared enough to travel to NYC so they could make their voices heard. Some of the people were rather aggressive with their points of view and reminded me of my younger self ~ yep, even though I understood and got their message, they were turning me off. Nevertheless, I did indeed appreciate their enthusiasm and attempt to get people to listen to a very important problem that befalls us all. We are in a climate crisis, it is not coming, it is here and we must change how we conduct ourselves now. Businesses must become responsible for their part in this crisis and change instead of simply profiting. We all need clean water, air and soil to survive, no matter who you are. I hope the world leaders heard our cries and will respond to our calls for action, because no one can afford inaction. After all, they also need clean water, air and soil. It’s their home too.
When I arrived back at Cornell University at 12:30am totally exhausted; it felt great to be part of my community who were fighting for our home ~ earth.
If you want to become involved or learn more about the Climate Change Movement ~ 350.org has a very informative website.
