water IS life

Imagine yourself in a beautiful scenery of mountains and rivers, of beaches and sea, of places where everything seems to show where heaven meets the earth. Hear the sounds of leafs, of the wind blowing the sand or the trees, the sound of the waves crashing and of the rivers' flow. Somehow you feel at peace and you feel grateful for being part of this planet, of this land, of everything that surrounds you in that moment. You feel humble as you see the power of nature, and that is because nature does not need people to be creative. People however, need nature for creative inspiration, for food, for supplies that we aren't able to get anywhere else.

For a while now I have been hearing about the next world crisis, the next world war, that will not be around oil or gas, but water instead. Water, our most valuable asset, will be our ultimate destruction if we loose it.

Living in cold areas, occasionally the pipes freeze and you have no water for cleaning, cooking, showering, or any of our daily chores. Indeed, we are lucky. Not everyone has the privilege to have cleaning routines or fancy ways of cooking.

Today I saw a documentary that highlighted these issues. People are forced to live under a monopoly of interests around water, where they are clearly the victims and so are their following generations. Children and their parents are forced to choose between washing their clothes, cooking, or washing themselves so that they are able to work properly and stay away from social stigmas.

Ancient traditions required the dead to be thrown into the rivers as well as village discharges. The notion that water can recycle has been incorporated in people's minds and that knowledge has passed through generations, and it has blown out of proportion as the world's population keeps increasing. Water can only take so much, and after a threshold value of contamination it actually becomes polluted and harmful for human beings, animals, and plants.

Think twice before leaving your tap open; re-use water for watering the plans (mine get cold tea!) and think of ways to help other manage their own water supply.

Remember: No water, no life.