Hello, how are you feeling?
After we spoke about the Jamun tree story last week, two things became clear: we need things to survive and there are different ways to procure them. Some good, some not so. One friend wanted to chop down the tree for some fruit, while another managed to get the same fruit by picking it up from the ground (low-hanging fruit, anyone?).
This started a chain of thoughts that ultimately paused with two difficult questions:
How much do I really need?
Where do I draw the line while claiming my right to survival?
I need natural resources. Fair.
But how much of it am I entitled to? The oil that nature makes in 70 years of my lifetime or hundreds of gallons made over millions of years?
I need water to live. No-brainer.
But how much? Can I just drink from surface rivers and lakes or do I have the right to bore wells and suck the ground?
If my claim to anything is disrupting nature, other people or global peace, am I not obliged to stop?
And if I don’t, which of the six friends am I?
With every single thing I take, do I end up harming others?
Such questions are often emotionally uncomfortable because I don’t want to stop being physically comfortable.
But we’ll still keep asking these questions. And find answers to do the right thing. Because until the time someone is unhappy because of us, we’ll never truly be happy.
