The Confession - A flash flood and a flashback

Hi friends! 👋

Remember that promise I made when I started this page, that I'd write about life, relationships, and the bigger things happening in the world around us? Two out of three, done. This is me finally cashing in on the third.

Today's topic isn't really about just me. It's about us: you, me, and everyone else caught up in this together. 🌍

I want to talk about the recent natural disasters around us, the flash floods in Nepal, most recently. But I don't want to just zoom out and talk about disasters, throwing stats and conclusions.

I want to zoom in: into the everyday actions you and I take, and how I've come to believe we're part of these events too, even in small, fractional ways.

This felt like too big a topic for one post, so I've split it into two:

1. The Confession (why I think we're all a little bit responsible)

2. The Correction (what I've actually changed, one habit at a time)

Let's begin.

A Flash Flood and a Flashback 🌊

Rewind to 2020. My mirror shelf was a small museum of skincare and makeup: bottles and containers, lined up like they had somewhere important to be. I'd become a victim of those "7-step skincare routine" videos that were everywhere during lockdown. My own team of Avengers (Avenging what? I have no idea to date).

Want to guess how long I actually followed the 7 steps? Not even a week. The bottles just sat there, untouched, until it was finally time to throw them out (expired, barely dented). 🫠

So what am I actually getting at here?

The excess consumerism I put on display that year somehow played a small part in the disasters we're seeing now. I know, it sounds like I'm giving myself a starring role in a big budget movie while I am just an extra in a multi-starrer.

But every product that sat unused on that shelf still took energy to make, and became waste. And waste like that is quietly one of the bigger contributors to the "unprecedented" climate events we keep naming.

The deadly disaster in Nepal, the one we've all watched unfold on our phones and laptops, is just the latest in a string of similar events, some smaller, some worse. People have lost their lives, homes, and loved ones. Not just people, either. Animals, birds, entire ecosystems that never contributed a single gram of carbon to this problem, end up paying for it anyway. 🐦

Here's what stayed the same across every one of these disasters:

• My social media feed filled up with videos, opinions, and think-pieces dissecting the event 📱

• Conversations with people around me turned to how global warming is affecting all of us

• And why the government should be doing more to protect us

Do you know what was missing from all of it?

Any real accountability. We joke about the apocalypse being here (and honestly, it kind of is) but I can't remember the last time someone actually questioned their own role in it. The government came up constantly. Our own habits never did.

And honestly? You are not wrong. We're all busy surviving about six different lives at once, and taking care of the environment can feel like a job that belongs to someone else, specifically, the people we pay taxes to.

In fact, large corporations (the ones actually responsible for a huge chunk of environmental damage) should be doing far more, in direct proportion to the mess they're making.

But (and it's a big but) 🙃

All of that being true at the same time, it doesn't cancel out the fact that ‘we’ still have a role here too. A small one, maybe. But not a zero.

Think about your own house for a second. Is keeping it clean only your mom's job? Would she be totally fine if you made a mess all day and just left it for her to clean up, every day, indefinitely? (We all know exactly how that conversation goes. None of us are winning that one. 😅)

We understand this instantly at home, that living somewhere means you contribute to its upkeep. But then we completely forget it the second the "house" in question is the entire planet.

Maybe that's really all this is about. Not guilt, not grand gestures, just remembering we live here too. Doing our part, however small, for the planet is a responsibility we simply shouldn't ignore.

So that's where Part 2 (The Correction) picks up. I'll walk you through the habits I've actually caught and changed, one at a time, and the ones still in-progress (my husband has, unfortunately, receipts 📝). Until then, I'd genuinely love it if you sat with just one habit of your own. That's all.

Because after all, boond boond se sagar banta hai. Even an ocean starts as one drop. 💧