Migratory Thoughts
About 40 miles away from our house in Texas is a wildlife preserve called Hagerman. It is a nondescript sanctuary where oil field and lake co-exist; which one could easily miss if they did not pay attention to the brown road signs leading up to it.
And yet for all its secretive existence its home to one of the most impressive sights we have seen as far as texas wildlife is concerned. Thousands upon thousands of migratory birds make this place their temporary abode enroute to warmer climes. Standing there on a December afternoon i could not but admire the amazing sight of a zillion geese first descending on the green fields for a feed and then majestically taking off for the nearby lake to avoid becoming a feed for the larger predator.
I felt for my winged friends and for the arduous journey they undertook every year to sustain life. And yet i felt with the passage of time we were impeding on their migratory instincts by taking away their safe passage in a variety of different ways. Their ecosystem was disappearing and what little was left was being polluted by our actions and thoughts. But what remained unchanged in all of this was the unerring determination of the birds to migrate and their sense of south from north.
I thought to myself "Are we any different?" and is "Migratory instinct limited to physical travel / what about the vaccilations of our mind?" and how are these "Migratory thoughts reshaping us and the world that we live in?"
Cattle ranchers leading the herds of long horns up the Chisolm trail encountered the same hostility in Oklahoma and Kansas as do people that travel from one part of the world to another in search for better economic climes.
We build fences then and are busy building walls now, creating red tape, guarding ourselves against the supposed brutality of the unknown and making every successive generation more and more ignorant and insular.
We have no problem consuming electronics using stuff mined by children often enslaved in their own countries bur we feel morally justified to stop a child entering our ecosystem in search for a better life because somehow this child entering our community is somehow going to diminish the prospects for my own. Our actions today are heralding a modern day dark age one which i hope will not last too long.
Ultimately we progress when we become more accepting of cultures and ideas, when we are able to celebrate our common beliefs and acknowledge our differences. Walls that distance people or block acceptance stall progress as humanity.
At individual levels when is the last time you acknowledge a new idea, accepted a view point contrary to our own, relied less on opinion and more on understanding.
As we enter the next decade let’s broaden our horizon, validate our convictions, precipitate our dreams and bring out the best form of us. Now that is a resolution worth having for the next decade. That truly would be vision 2020.
And yet for all its secretive existence its home to one of the most impressive sights we have seen as far as texas wildlife is concerned. Thousands upon thousands of migratory birds make this place their temporary abode enroute to warmer climes. Standing there on a December afternoon i could not but admire the amazing sight of a zillion geese first descending on the green fields for a feed and then majestically taking off for the nearby lake to avoid becoming a feed for the larger predator.
I felt for my winged friends and for the arduous journey they undertook every year to sustain life. And yet i felt with the passage of time we were impeding on their migratory instincts by taking away their safe passage in a variety of different ways. Their ecosystem was disappearing and what little was left was being polluted by our actions and thoughts. But what remained unchanged in all of this was the unerring determination of the birds to migrate and their sense of south from north.
I thought to myself "Are we any different?" and is "Migratory instinct limited to physical travel / what about the vaccilations of our mind?" and how are these "Migratory thoughts reshaping us and the world that we live in?"
Cattle ranchers leading the herds of long horns up the Chisolm trail encountered the same hostility in Oklahoma and Kansas as do people that travel from one part of the world to another in search for better economic climes.
We build fences then and are busy building walls now, creating red tape, guarding ourselves against the supposed brutality of the unknown and making every successive generation more and more ignorant and insular.
We have no problem consuming electronics using stuff mined by children often enslaved in their own countries bur we feel morally justified to stop a child entering our ecosystem in search for a better life because somehow this child entering our community is somehow going to diminish the prospects for my own. Our actions today are heralding a modern day dark age one which i hope will not last too long.
Ultimately we progress when we become more accepting of cultures and ideas, when we are able to celebrate our common beliefs and acknowledge our differences. Walls that distance people or block acceptance stall progress as humanity.
At individual levels when is the last time you acknowledge a new idea, accepted a view point contrary to our own, relied less on opinion and more on understanding.
As we enter the next decade let’s broaden our horizon, validate our convictions, precipitate our dreams and bring out the best form of us. Now that is a resolution worth having for the next decade. That truly would be vision 2020.
Amazing blog! Well written and thought provoking!
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