Things won’t work if we wait for others to change. Be The Change

[This video is an excerpt from Amma’s Message at the Summit of Conscience for the Climate in Paris organised by the Special Envoy for the Protection of the Planet of French President François Hollande.]

At times, people have told Amma about experiencing a sense of imbalance similar to vertigo. This can be due to the disturbance of cells in the ears. The situation with Nature has become like this these days.

With each tree man chops down, he is making his own coffin. When we milk a cow, we should leave some milk for its calf. But today man milks until he gets the last drop. This harms the next generation. For this generation, at least some freshwater remains. People may make money and procreate, but imagine if there were no water left to drink! Along with earning money and procreating, it’s important to think of preserving Nature for the future generations.

https://youtu.be/JkL3vsN5pEM

Say, a fire breaks out in a 10-story building and the person living on the first floor cries out, “Please help! Please come down and help! If we all try together, we can put out the fire!” But the people living on the top floor say, “It’s not my floor; it’s yours. It’s not my problem but yours.” But it soon it will become their problem too. What is “his” problem now will become my problem in the future. It will come back to us. We should be aware of that.

This is how it is currently. One thinks it’s someone else’s problem—not mine. If an earthquake happens in one place, all the planes can be grounded for hours. So many businessmen can then be affected. No exports or imports, and so on. Like this, an earthquake in one place can affect so many lives around the world.

It is because of this that Amma always says that there is harmony in the universe. Everything in the universe is interconnected. The universe is a net held by each of us. When there is movement in one corner of a net held by four people, it reverberates everywhere. Every action we perform—consciously or unconsciously, alone or as a group—reflects in every corner of the universe. Things won’t work if we wait for others to change. Even if they do not change, we should be willing to change. We should see what we can do.