Pikaia

I was Pikaia...I'm born from the ocean. I still swim and feel at home. Who got me out here? I'm just a remote accident, a survivor of extinction waves, those waves where many didn't. It just happened to be me. I could very well right now have to be hiding behind rocks to escape from dinosaur's teeth, or having to keep watching my back on the savannas. But just by luck, things took another way. Whose luck?. We conquered our greatness, but we compromised a whole planet on the way. It sounds a little like those promos, pay one and take five, but the opposite and in a biggest scale of numbers. In order to make this planet perfectly comfy, easy, and luxurious for us, and just for some of us, we sacrifice a brilliant creation of who knows who, and this part doesn't matter. What we can't deny, is that we all see a world made of Biodiversity, colors, incredible species hiding in the smallest places, intelligences expressed in the most astonish ways and far from being simply linked to brain size. Cognitively complex means of life that science tries to understand even today, and probably never will, including us. We watch a planet standing on its feet year after year of less care, fighting with the tools that this amazing ecological system has. And we live, day after day, without realizing we are in a war. We wake up, we look at the sky, and we say ''Look this beautiful morning'' and breathe a deep and fresh air being grateful for a new day. Just one second after, naively or not, we turn our backs and walk away starting the automatic environmentally harmful actions of our days, being on the wrong side of a war against ourselves.

Then, I look at the world, this almost impossible scenario to be pictured whole in our mind, and try to think from where can I recommend someone to start when it comes to run and catch this little period of time we still have for, literally, save the world. Where can I indicate my own self to start from? I'm not a disconnected person, I know what is going on, and I also know the importance of my actions, so I work on them every day. Even so, I have to ask myself Where can I start from today to do it even better?.

Three actions for a good start.

Smallness complex: When it comes to finding a guilty subject for this ecocaos, pops in my mind that it may be either or both, our complex of smallness, and ironically, our ''thinking big'' kind of mantra. Maybe starting from reinventing what being small means for us can be a good place to start. We can use our own ecosystem as an example. Think of those small kinds of lives that, without them, our existence in this world would be impossible. Bees, plankton, fungus. Whenever you think you are too small for your actions to have an impact in the world, that you are too tinny to be remarkable, think about them, those smalls amounts of cells being fundamental for the existence of millions of human beings. No one gives them a prize and actually, the opposite, few people care. But they are still there, keeping us alive. None of them can just feel like ‘’I don’t care for this planet and I will not get my actions in sync with the ecosystem’’. Well, it is a shame that we, can. And we do. So, don’t let our contemporary epidemic of smallness complex drive you away from being aware of what you are part of, what you are made of. Get in contact with the earth, fully, and the next will flow. You don’t need to be living on farms, it is a matter of deciding that you will, some way or another, return to feel part of nature.

Thinking small before thinking big: Another possible good way to start is demystifying that the most important thing is to think big. Remaining in that bubble we end believing that only world-scale actions are worth it to get involved with. But, how can we possibly make a global scale difference if we can't do it in our own home, with our own family, with ourselves? How can we influence the world if we can't influence our community, our neighbors? So, just for once, don't think big, think small. Look around. You don't have to wait for a mass of people passing by your door for you to follow them. If now you see that the common way is the wrong way, so don't be afraid of walking alone to the opposite side, because you will naturally help more people to get out of their doors and join you, and you will be guided as well. Engage with your community. Feel the needs of the local sustainable business and support them. Many of our social current problems exist today because we lost our natural behavior of looking around us, of taking care of our own community, on focusing on what can I do here, right where I’m. If you can do bigger, amazing. But first, the first. You first.

Breathe deep three times consciously: This is a simple tool, that I confess to still be working on it, but when being successful, I can feel like breaking a copied behavior of copying behaviors. We like to think we are free, but the truth is that most minds are just set automatically of living by coping the most commons actions, and this is a result of our disconnection from nature as well... Breathing deep three times before starting a new action, will help you to break this habit of being on automatic and bring your awareness in all your personal fields, but also on your sustainable action. Breathe three times before pushing a paper towel and think if you really need it. Breathe three times before flushing the toilet and think if there is a real need for that already. Breathe three times before entering a store to buy a piece of clothing that you don't actually need. Breathe three times before leaving the house, so you will not forget your eco bag.Breathe three times before choosing your food. It can sound like something impossible to do, but once you stay doing so, you will feel much more in control of your life and your actions, and believe me, it is a unique feeling of breaking free.

If you don't know from where to start, here is a good place. And remember; your actions, small or not, have the butterfly effect. Not everybody can do it all, some will have to do what they can with what they have. Sometimes, to go support a sustainable business, for example, instead of just the cheapest one, will be a choice for you but not for others who can’t afford it. By making the choices on your reach, you will help to build new demands, the market will adapt, and it will get more accessible for everybody. There are actions that everybody that has a comfort of a home, the privilege of water, and daily access to food, should do with no excuses. Think about your trash, where it goes? How can you produce less? Why there are not such things as ‘’taking out the trash’’?. Take care of the water you use, get to know the source of what you eat, support local and sustainable farmers and general producers, think new, make researches, have compost if possible, share the content of awareness, fully banish the use of disposables. You just have to decide you will implement at leat basic changes to your life. If you can do even more, that would be great. But if you can’t, at least, you are not being a weight on the wrong side of the scale.

Take nature’s hand, go swim with an octopus, race a horse, or jump in mud ponds with pigs if you are feeling like it, that is a choice. But at this point, doing the basic is not a choice anymore, is survival. It is about respecting the rights of all kinds of lives.

Let’s go? .