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I’ve always asked myself this question: What would my life be if I wasn’t living in the city? Don’t get me wrong, I love my life here however, as humans, there would always be questions of discontentment about our lives. There would be occasions wherein I would get tired of the bustling city, the heavy traffic that I would experience every day and especially the countless sleepless nights in order to finish everything that I need to do. Sometimes I wished that time could just stop and we could all take a breather from the things that we do. Unfortunately, this is reality. Time will go on no matter how much we wish it to stop. It’s hard, but we need to accept this fact. I would sometimes look out at the window of my car and look at the passing sceneries and just sigh, thinking that when will this scenery change into something different and new. I’ve always longed for a world where trees and flowers were abundant but being in the city, this is kind of a wishful thinking. Anyway, where am I going with this? So, last October 1, 2016, I had the chance to participate in a little outing with my friends and teachers to a place called CELL (Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning). At first, I was kind of hesitant to go but, there was this part of me who wanted a change of pace. Living in the city can really drown you in your own world. I sometimes forget the people around me since there are a lot of things that I need to do. I actually realized that I’m slowly loosing myself and blending in with society and I wanted to rediscover myself as a person. I wanted to clear my mind from all the problems around me and I wanted to start living in the now.
Fast forward to when we arrived at CELL. So, before we had the walkthrough in the place, we had an orientation and a simple ritual in order to give thanks to Earth who provided us everything that we needed. Basically, the goal of CELL is to operate a spirituality center that will propagate the New Story of Creation as a means of alerting the human to the current ecological and social crisis and awaken in them a vision that will give a direction for action at the present moment in history. I think this is really addressing the issues that we have now. Global warming and climate change is not something that we can easily brush of and not consider it as a national priority. But here’s the thing: Climate Change is happening now, not only that, it brings a lot of destruction that was never experienced before and I believe that this is a wakeup call from Earth saying “Hey, so I’m dying and if you don’t stop what you’re doing now, you’ll face my wrath. Nothing serious really, just a bunch of tornadoes and storms and I might add a little drought here and there.”
In order to address this issue, CELL has created a place where sustainable living can be achieved. This is a place wherein humans and nature can coexist without destroying each other and this is a place wherein each of us can live harmoniously without worrying what will happen tomorrow since CELL is such a peaceful place. Sir Renato was the one who showed us around and he gave us a brief background on how the place observed sustainable living. So first of all, they recycle almost everything that are being donated to them by the church or the school. He said that as much as possible, they wanted to turn those materials into something that can be used again however, we cannot deny the fact that some materials cannot be recycled like batteries for example so, they just place those things in a storage room. Second, they use this machine called biodigester. This machine uses human feces which would be then converted to methane in order to be used as gas to cook food. Third, they also use solar panels to power their homes. Lastly they raise their own animals which are fed with organic food and they also plant a lot of trees and plants that makes their environment cleaner.
Fun Fact: the more lichens there are on trees, the cleaner the air. I guess that explained why my coughing stopped since I’m allergic to the polluted air in the city. Anyway, the things that I mentioned earlier are just some of the things that they are practicing in order to maintain a sustainable life. The tour that we had around the place made me really relaxed which helped me think and clear my mind. I realized that I’ve been too uptight with myself. The fact that exams are coming up and the expectations of a lot of people from me made me forget who I truly am. This might be cliché but it’s true, let’s face it: we get caught up in our self-doubts that make us forget what we are truly capable of as human beings. We only focus what’s in front of us and discard anything that doesn’t concern us, in this experience, I learned to stop looking down and run forward. If you want change to happen, we need to start it. There’s no point in holding ourselves back, this is what I learned in CELL. These people are trying their best to save the Earth and look at me, I’m a student who’s been taught countless times to make a shift in this world in order to create change however, I was only focusing how these learning affect my grades but that’s wrong. We need to apply these learnings in our lives.
Living in a world where everything is happening so fast, we forget our true purpose in our world and that is saving and protecting this place we live in. People now a days only focus on their phones and we are currently living in an era where the throw away culture is very rampant, which causes the accumulation of trash in our place. We also forgot how to make connections with the people around us. Adding friends on facebook isn’t considered making a connection since there is a barrier between us that hinders us to really know them for who they are. We are in a world where we are losing sight of ourselves and becoming too dependent on technology to sustain our lives. Sorry to break it to you guys but the truth is, there’s someone who was always looking out for us and sustaining our needs but we always take her for granted. What we need now is change and we need it fast. The rapid damage that we are inflicting on Earth is being reciprocated by the intense weather changes and the rapid increase of the temperature in our planet. We need to be more aware of what’s happening around us. Technology is a double edged sword, it may bring harm to us but at the same time it can become an avenue to raise our voices and awareness to the current environment situations that we are experiencing.
Creating a world wherein sustainable living is evident isn’t as hard as one might think it is. It’s really simple and we can pattern our lifestyle with the people who are living in CELL. We don’t really need to live an extravagant life. This life isn’t only about the amount of money that you have “To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.” We often forget what’s truly beautiful in our lives and what we need to do is to connect with the silence within us, in order to make sense of the disturbance going on around us…
