Yesterday I had an unexpected reaction to a video I was watching about the Ganges River in India. The video was about how a man quit his job to start an incense making business using flower waste from temples. 16% of the pollution in the Ganges comes from this flower waste. As the video came to an end, they showed an image of the river and gave stats on the progress of cleaning it up. 

I don’t remember my exact thought but it was something along the lines of: “Their backyard is my backyard. Our backyard is the world.” With this, I saw in my mind an image of the Ganges free of pollution, without cities crowding it’s banks, respected, honored and tended to by humans. I knew this was the future, though one beyond my lifetime, and I began to cry. I sobbed actually. It was a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness at humanity’s indifference towards nature and relief that there is hope, that humans can and are changing, albeit slowly. 

I knew that the clean water and air of the future cannot be known to us in the present. We have grown so use to polluted that we would be shocked to smell truly clean, fresh air and clean water. We think we know, but we do not. Thankfully, my grandchildren will know. 

There was a guide close and I could hear her reaching out to me to calm me down and reassure me that all would be okay. I had a thought then about how in all this darkness, if we just keep in our minds a vision of what could be, we can and will create it. To be distracted by the present, by the darkness looming all around, is easy. It is harder to focus on what we want to create in the future and even harder to have faith in the potential of the human race for positive change. 

One of the hardest things for me to accept about this world is how humans treat it. Though I can easily pretend I don’t feel the grief at what I am witnessing and, sadly, am a part of, there are moments such as these where I become very aware of just how deeply I feel for this planet and its inhabitants. My heart aches but at the same time it rejoices. There are so, so many emotions swirling inside me that I struggle to not be overwhelmed, and oftentimes cannot help but be overtaken. I feel so small and insignificant in these moments, unable to exact the enormous change that is needed. I would, if I could, snap my fingers and wipe away all the damage that’s been done to this planet. To stand on the banks of that river and see it pure and magnificent again would bring me such joy, even though, for so long, I thought of places like India as “not my problem”. I see myself and humanity shifting slowly towards embracing every part o the planet as our “backyard”, accepting responsibility for all the neglect and abuse, and stepping up to create a better world.

It is clear to me that this moment in Earth’s history is monumental. It isn’t obvious just yet, but what humanity is going through and doing now is what will lead to a great healing and restoration of this planet and all its inhabitants. The hope and relief I felt at Knowing all is not lost was just what I needed. We are the change we need and we will succeed.