Today is international World Water Day, and all over the world there are celebrations and people raising awareness for the appreciation and care of one of our most important natural resources. Wherever you are and whatever your day holds, I encourage you to think about water and your relationship to water. What does it mean to you? Is there a favorite river, beach or lake that you have fond memories of or strong ties to? What can we do to take care of it and keep it clean?
In the wake of recent disasters both natural and man-made, I did something very out of character for me, which was tuning in to the news for a week. In letting the news into my life, there came along with it a lot of concern and sadness for the people of Japan, and for our earth as nuclear power plants were melting down and releasing radiation. The consequences of pursuing nuclear energy weighed heavily on my mind. A lot of worry crept in also, over things I heard about the possibility of nuclear drift and fallout reaching the West coast. It took a lot of energy to sift through all of the information and circle around the question of what I could do with it.
I will be the first to admit that I live under a rock. I don’t have television, I don’t get a newspaper, but I do have the radio and Internet, which can be as good a place as any to find out what’s going on in the world if you’re up for a little research and checking out the sources. The barrier I run into here, however, is that the news can be a lot for me personally to take in and process. I get so overwhelmed with the weight of all the troubling things going on around this wide world of ours that I find it very difficult to stop thinking about them and go on about my day. Thus, I have fallen out of keeping up-to-date on the news. I feel very strongly, however, that it is important for us human beings to strive towards creating positive changes in this world, so this creates quite a dilemma for me. How does one achieve a balance between staying informed and allowing in what we can handle? In pondering this, I realize that my news comes from conversations with friends and folks I run into around town, which is how news would have traditionally been spread amongst people for hundreds of years before radio and television came onto the scene. But is it enough in our modern world? I am still figuring this out.
What I have found I can do is work away at making a positive impact (and reduce my impact) on this little piece of ground I’m living on, teaching my kids to take good care of the world they live in, and do my part as one person. Simple things like talking about water and the part it plays in our lives and our ecosystem may seem small, but just like tiny streams grow into larger rivers, so do our ideas and actions. When we break it down into our own piece, we can accomplish so much more than when we get bogged down in trying to take it all on. I will always have to work at keeping myself informed on a national and international level, but in the meantime I’m doing what I can to be of use right here.
In closing, here is a fitting song about environmental stewardship, a sort of conversation with the earth, by my favorite folk musician, May Erlewine. I gather a lot of inspiration from it when thinking about these things.
“I said what can I do?
I am only just me.
She said don’t do it all,
just do something,
Please.”
~May Erlewine
Great article! As usual you warm my soul. Keep it up Mama!
every word of this rings true for me, lara. and thank you so much for that song. so beautiful. 🙂