Learning to live in harmony with nature

One of the major challenges of the world, particularly in India, and very specifically to Kerala, is how we behave with our environment. The basic question is what is our environment? Is it our home, our property, our office, the public road, public places?

Environment is anything from which we are made up of. Take for instance, your body. If your body weighs 50 kg, it is because of the food you ate, the water you drank, the air you breath, and the heat you produce. Therefore, you are directly indebted to the earth. You represent environment which consists of land, water, air, heat, and space.

In order words, for instance, 70 per cent of your body is made of water which can be seen everywhere in the environment. Similarly, from birth to death something that happens without a break is breathing in air which is oxygen and breath out air that is carbon dioxide. In doing so, you are part of balancing of the whole air. So you are nothing but air as well, because air is your environment. Air contributes to the environment.

Likewise, if you examine the temperature of your body, it is continuously maintained at a normal temperature of 98.6 degree Fahrenheit. And that vanishes only upon your death. Where do you get this temperature? It is a direct contribution from the sun. So again, sun and heat is your environment. With fifty kg of weight and 65 cm height you occupy a space which belongs to nature. Therefore, the five elements of nature, are nothing but you and it is reflected in you. And you are dependent on these components of nature for your existence and growth. The day your soul leaves your body, your body merges back into nature to create many more bodies. You are part of a recycling process of nature for its very existence.

If we are dependant on the environment and its survival leads to our survival, and our survival is its recycling and balancing requirement; then, the picture becomes very clear that its maintenance has to be one of our goals.

But when you look at many parts of the world, people have maintained their environment. Forests, trees, grass, greenery, and lakes are maintained in its natural course, allowing all to live in a balanced state If the environment is polluted there will be imbalance your survival.

Do you know how the environment punishes? Bacteria and virus are life that environment can trigger at any point of time that can kill humanity. So, one must be aware of the creation of an imbalance in the environment when trees are cut water polluted.

If this awareness is with the youth of the country, with the people, of the country, there is no need for social forestry, for municipal workers to clean, we ourselves can do it. We don’t do it because we are least bothered. We consider it as a low job, and we leave it to some people who have no commitment and do it only for their livelihood.

If we also take up the responsibility of balancing nature, then the world would become a better place to live in with so many diseases vanished from the face of earth. Where should this awareness come from?

The awareness to balance the environment should be promoted in the classrooms. Every classroom should end in this. Be it language, physics, chemistry, zoology, or botany. It should end in giving students knowledge of a balanced survival.

All teachers need to realise that what they teach is not a subject but a life-skill for every child to develop good character and find a career when duly respecting and balancing and working in harmony with the environment. If this learning is lost, schools can contribute nothing to the future generation.