If you are surrounded by green all round you and it is serene inside, then what can you complain about in life ? I was enjoying the greenery of the environs around my home and serenity inside. Nature has its unique ways of cooling your senses and I felt it that way today.

This led me to think and reflect more on life and living. I realised that if we live a life of being “green” in every aspect of our lives and being “content” with what we have, will it not be wonderful. I realised it would be but wondered why is it so difficult.

If we have to lead a green life, we need to be sustainable in every action of ours. We should give back to environment a little more than what we take from nature. This would seem a tough challenge. Imagine the paper, water, fuel, power and other valuable resources we waste every day. We kill trees, ensuring drying up of rivers, power cuts and degradation of nature by use of fossil fuels in every way.

Imagine a life where we could have our own well for water needs, generate our own power using the sun, recycle and reuse resources thus creating no waste, how would life be. There would be no pollution. There would be no climate change and no shortage of water, power or any other resources needed by human kind. We will leave behind more for our future generations than we have inherited from our fore fathers.

Similarly I was wondering how life would be if all of us were content with what we have. Contentment is a state of mind more than a balance between wants and needs. When want exceeds needs, it becomes greed. This is possibly again easier said than practised.

Why do we get greedy even when most of our needs to live a happy life is fulfilled ? This may be because we live a life of comparisons. We accumulate wealth more for establishing or proving our status in society as compared to others than what we need to be happy. The day we live for our own happiness, we may live a life of contentment.

I may appear philosophical in my hypothesis. But, to be honest this is what most of us spend our life doing. We want to buy a second bigger car because our neighbour has one. We want to buy a second house since that’s a style statement we may want to make in social circles. We use more than one phone because we want to be seen with latest phone in the market as that it determines our social worth.

None of the above are impacting our daily needs in life. We can live only in one house. We can drive only one car at a time. We cannot improve our communication with others by having more than one mobile phone. By the time we realise that we are chasing an illusion, our health is impacted and we do not have the time to enjoy life anymore. So, the cycle continues.

One can experience both the green and the serene in the photo above.

It is time to pause and reflect. It is time to sit back and take stock. It is time to fulfil our needs and not our greed. It is time to live a sustainable life. Let us learn to contribute to the greenery around us by giving back to life more than we take from it. It is time to change our attitude to life and living.

Time to change is now.

S Ramesh Shankar

16th September 2018