Diarrhea AGAIN!!!! Oh well. Someone used to tell me that shit happens, but I never though I would take them literally with that statement.
I began my day working at the YOUth LEADing India Congress. This program is designed to bring kids together, discussing major environmental issues. There are a total of 18 of these congresses happening all over the world. From India to Australia to South America, students are gathering in a hope to broaden their understanding
We focused today on the problems that these kids think should be on the top of our list to fix. With only the minds of young children, they came up with the number #1 problem that should be on the top of any list that is in regard to any problem: Lack of Responsibility and Awareness. If this issue were to be solved tomorrow, it would make solving all the other issues that much easier. Education is the fundamental element to our human existence, and these kids nailed it!
After a small lunch break where the kids were able to hangout and mingle, they calculated something called an Eco-footprint. This footprint shows how many planet Earths it would require to live sustainably if each other person on the used the same amount of resources. Calculate yours here.
Tomorrow we will begin discussion of how we can make changes to our lifestyles and what else we can do within our communities to make advancements in solving these problems. Our earth is a living creature, and we are slowly killing it. How slow is that though? Our children's lifetimes, grandchildrens? Look at where we have come in your lifetime. In you parents and their parents lifetimes.
Our world is moving faster and faster towards something, but what this is we don't know? Why not advance in a responsible state of awareness where we know where we have come from and where we know where we want to go? Do we really want to continue in the direction we have? Where some cities don't see the sun for weeks due to pollution? Or where billions of people do not receive adequate drinking water? We are smart enough to figure these problems out, yet why do they persist? Money. Plain and simple, it is greed. Enough of this though, on to other pressing events of the day.
Today news reached me that South Korea and North Korea have exchanged attacks. This is a signal to the rest of us that our world is still a dangerous place to live. America currently has troops on every continent in the northern hemisphere. These troops are a deterrent to what? Are they truly a deterrent or a fuel to fire? This will be seen.
These days, I find that if we connect through our common routes as human beings we will see past our useless national fervor and racist pride. Everyone is flesh and blood. Everyone lives and dies. Living in the City of Benares, a city where people come to die, has been a great learning lesson. I know we are flesh and blood. When living in Wisconsin, my father and I would cook up some meat on the grill. Oh how did I love the smell of that grill. I think a bit differently on that now. Last weekend I spent a night walking along the river. At around 1AM I approached one of the infamous burning ghats. This is where they bring dead bodies from all over the city to be burned and cast into Ganga Ji. Ganga ji will then take their soul off to heaven. Well, back on this plane of reality, the smoke and smell of burning human bodies is not so different from that of those steaks on the grill. Our flesh burns and gives off a similar smell of grilled meat. Wafting that in, I sat there for a minute perplexed at the similarity I was experiencing. This startled me, but not to the effect I had once thought it would. Seeing a dead body. Seeing a dead body floating in the river decomposing. Seeing a dead body being burned. This is not something poetic. Here, it is just another fact of life. This goes along with children laying in the streets covered in feces. Whether it is their feces or that of one of the numerous animals that lives in the same vicinity as them is undetermined. This goes along with the improper sanitation that is common and the lack of regular drinking water that the entire city experiences.
The water in the Ganga is so polluted, that it does not even meet the recommended water quality levels for agricultural use. Yet daily people bath, drink, and wash their belongings in this sacred yet sullied river. These are all just common facts of life here in the worlds largest democracy. Remember these things when you get in your car and drive to your families homes. So remember that as you sit down to your Thanksgiving Dinner, in your warm house, with your hot showers and baths. Remember that you are just 1:7,200,000,000 on this planet.
Eat, Enjoy, and God Bless us all. That is if God takes our prayer into consideration with the other 7.2 billion prayers being asked.
~Craig
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