Saturday, April 21, 2007

Our healing potential and choices: Yes/No

I have to begin this post by saying: No, No, No, the Hell NO! I am my Big Mother´s daughter!
Ok, now that you know which side I took I´ll go on...
Social Life begins with the first opening and closing of the mouth and ends with last breath, the mouth opens and does not close again. Life is based on an unbroken chain of openings and closings, contracting and relaxing of your mouth. As a baby your only purpose of early communicate is to attract attention from your parents and others in the environment. And you go on in your journey through Life learning the basic words to socialize. In a constant repetition of words you develop the right muscles in your mouth, tongue and lips for speaking, and you connect them with feelings. With yours and with the others. And of course if you´re lucky enough you learn to write too.

It´s easy to say "yes". The word always drops out smoothly and nobody expects any explanation. In English as well as in Spanish even the mouth muscles reflect a gesture that could be taken as a short smile. You have to stretch the ends of your lips at least a bit to say "yes" or "si". It seems to me that the musculature of the lips and cheek are more prepared to say yes than any other word. It´s even sexy to say yes. You mean agreement, submission, approval -to approve and/or to be approved-, surrender, etc. So you´re not requested for more... you´re in. You fit.

On the contrary, saying "no" requires more effort. On a social side we´re usually compelled to give some sort of explanations (if not directly been asked for them). "No" is linked to opposition, rebellion, disapproval, disgust, etc. Usually means being simply being contrary to the status quo and sometimes your no can be interpreted as unaccepted unsocial behavior or worst. I heard that by adding no to a statement your brain translates the sentence into yes to that statement. If this is true I hope that in the next state of human brain evolution this would not be the case so that we won´t need to twist our brains in changing vocal nos for in-somethings or out-somethings or un-somethings to act in accordance to our feelings.

But the words yes and no aren´t synonymous of positive and negative by themselves. They have to turn into actions to mean something.

April 22nd is Earth Day.
Oral and written mechanics behind, it´s time we express our wants and needs for our Big Mother in actions. We have the healing potential and the choice. Aren´t we lucky?
All over the world people are becoming more and more conscious about the dangers of our past and ongoing actions against our Big Mother. Commitments on repairing are spreading around. Children are drawing huge learnings from this and are taking their side in the change. Local communities are changing habits for the sake of her health. And thus for the health of all of us.
Wind power. Solar energy. Cool miner communities rising up against the destruction of their mountains. Farmers replacing the herbicides for non toxic compounds. City people turning off unnecessary appliances. Car pools. And so on...

Let´s make a happy everyday birthday for her and let´s take responsibility for our acts. You don´t need to make her a cake, just stop the harm. Do your part. Whatever the level you can. If you are a teacher, teach. If you have money to pledge, do it to your favorite organization, they´re plenty of them on the internet. If you have a mouth or a keyboard, use it to communicate the message to your friends or to unknown people. If you have children of your own, tell them.
Everything little thing counts. And begin whenever you want. The sooner the better.
Use the word yes if you´re going to act positively or use the word no if you´re going to oppose destruction.


It´s not mandatory, just a gentle request to join us.
We´re all Big Mother´s children.


It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth.
I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.
I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Neil Armstrong

2 comments:

Maryam in Marrakesh said...

Mother nature is a big part of my children's lives. They go around thanking her for a beautiful flower that they see or the pattern on a peacock. It's so sweet. I am so glad we are raising them to love the earth:-)

99 said...

It doesn´t surprise me that you have such loving children since you are a very sensible and lovable person yourself Maryan.
We all have so much to thank for!
And so much to repair...