Living the concern

I entered the lift sluggishly and waited for the other person to enter. When the gate started closing and there was no sign of the person who was waiting outside with me, I stopped the closing gate. I sneaked out of lift to find out the status and saw the person still standing there. My expression threw the question “you coming in?” While the person could decide on the answer to my expression, the other lift gate opened and she started to enter. We parted ways with the puzzled looks on both faces. While I tried to figure out the situation later for some time, forgot it afterwards. Coincidentally the situation reenacted itself after 1-day gap. Everything happened in same sequence, only this time I asked the reason. The person said she is heading to the topmost floor and would like/want to have a non-stop service of lift. I entered the same lift and told that we will take the lift to topmost floor and then I can descend it to my floor. She agreed but insisted to know why I am so adamant on this.
I said, “I want to talk to you. Don’t you think it is waste of energy and resource to use two different lifts at same time when we can do with one of them?”
As per her “First, it does not take that much of energy for operating lifts to make such a difference. Second, one instance is not that costly” and we reached her floor.
We parted leaving each other equally amazed with our own ways.
Life is surprisingly abundant when it comes to perceiving a situation. There can be so many variations that we can never understand with our limited thought-process.
Aisha insisted on finding ways to use the filter let out water in the PG kitchen for some useful purpose. However, they could not devise any automated way out to take care of it. After lot of altercations, manual method of collecting the water in some container, empty it in bathroom was decided. There were strong opposition that no one should be forced to comply and it is individual selection to do the act or not. The point that it does not matter as much to save few buckets of water to add so much inconvenience to life.
Why is it that every discussion around some positive change is always measured for its instant quantitative impact? The degradation of natural resources and environment also happened slowly and not overnight. Did we measure each extra bucket we drowned while washing the car or each non-essential bike drive we took? When we are not so calculative of our negative acts, why positive changes are met with this indifference?
We talk so much on the issue of environment and climate change. Everyone knows and feels so much about it. We know what is wrong and how the resources are misused. We know that future generations will face problems in deteriorating quality of life. After knowing so much and talking so much, the impact of it on ground is still missing. Where is all the effort going? May be we have already passed the period when the need was to discuss the issue and debate on it. Time has come for us to start living our concern. If we are not able to live it, believe me we are not feeling the concern. The point that the case here is much gross and macro and needs to be handled at policy levels is correct. However, every micro level change can shake the macro scenario. We need to look at the lifestyle we had in society may be 20 – 25 years back to see the difference in our ecological awareness in day to day life. We have seen times when the acts like segregating the waste, using the water through tumblers rather than taps etc. were followed in natural way. Today we have reached point when we need rules to teach us these basic things.
Municipals have to tell us that the city we inhibit is our own and we should work towards its restoration. We use more electricity as governments offer us more free thresholds to gain power. What does this show? We have lost our power to decide for ourselves. Organizations, businesses and governments decide what we use and how we spend on nonsensical things.
Time has come to take back the remote and start controlling our lives in more awakened state, not only for ourselves but for ecological partners we have. Let the start be as small as it can be but start moving. There can be tremendous technological advancements and we may achieve incredible milestones, but basics will remain as such. Everything has to start from the atomic level; nothing can be built starting from top. To build something we have to create the base first.
We are standing at a point when we should live a more aware lifestyle to contribute our part. Let us shift our focus from measuring to choosing the best way. The effect of our choice will take care of measurement and we will be able to see the change.