By Jia Xuan Chok & Kayla Guevara
What am I saving for? What am I living for? What does the future look like?
Questions that have been lingering in the back of my mind for a while now. What does the future look like when summers have been reaching too high of temperatures? When winters seem to be getting colder each year? When natural disasters are raging globally? What exactly am I saving for when my future seems to be clouded by this somber news? Convenience, comfort, and climate action — three words that I do not know how to juggle. Three words that radiate urgency, but together make me afraid. Dear Earth, from the bottom of my heart, I am anxious and I fear.
I fear with all my senses; my eyes witnessing actions of ignorance, ears picking up the trace of overdevelopment, lungs inhaling products of contamination, mouth touching and hands feeling the gifts of earth. I fear that this anxiety that is constantly being mapped onto my actions is not shared among my peers with years and years remaining on this ill planet. This anxiety touches the construction of ourselves. Who am I as a person? I am sensitive. I notice the changes because I am constantly present in the moment, with Earth. Walking down the tourist night market in Melaka, Malaysia, my dwindling appetite had little to do with its uncleanliness, but more because of its packaging and its disposability. My eyes on the weekend crowd envisioned the amount of trash this creates every day. My appetite dwindled for this. How can my mouth water for food served in containers and skewers that are draining life from our ecosystem? Staring at the amount of plastic and disposable utensils, my eyes welled. I couldn’t feel the hunger anymore.
And yet, I hunger for action. Who am I, but an agent of movement despite often being cloaked by despair? Not knowing how to make a difference, but immensely longing for it to emerge. Who am I, but someone entangled with every being on this Earth? Who am I, but a person who struggles to embrace the complexity of the present? As I dance with other lives, I make sense of mine. I move between stages of hope, longing, despair, and loss – just as the ocean tides move and consume the shore. I listen to the harmonious, polyphonic melodies of creatures ranging in size – birds, insects, even humans of various cultures, beliefs, and dispositions. As I listen, I imagine. As I move, I dream. As I stand still, I realize. Clothed by shelter, a full fridge, and air-conditioning, I come to terms with the privilege and power I hold in my hands. Viewing and traversing the city of Manila, Philippines from the tinted windows of our car, I hunger for action, and I realize that I am capable of it.
Fear works well as a propeller for action. Taking action means transporting oneself even deeper into the heart of the situation; it means being even more vulnerable and entangled with a cause as one witnesses firsthand the translation of one’ efforts into impactful changes, or sometimes the sobering realization of failure. Both outcomes carve and reinvent the space for discussion. This dance asks for you to employ all your senses because nature doesn’t come to you in whole otherwise, and because I grapple with hope and despair with sensitivity, a profound connection is forged in how I hold hands with this changing yet stagnant world. When I touch, see, listen, smell, and converse, the world itself seems to encourage my optimism and perseverance. When I feel I’m falling, the gifts of the world stood by to catch me because when you look closer, capability and anxiety both stem from the desire to preserve the beauty Earth has pulled me closer to. Proceeding down this path of activism, Earth has taught me to bolster my passion and patience like the simultaneous calmness and fever of the winds and seas. With me this spirit I will carry and muster even in the most anxious times along this road.
The Polyphony 