What will your legacy on Earth be?
What exactly can we do?
You have three choices. You have got this Earth on your lap. This generation has got this Earth; on your lap.
You can keep it as it is with all its pluses and minuses; this is one option.
The second option, you can improve it. You can make a better world, a better Earth through a sensitive life, through managing the resources well, by bringing in awareness in people that we must care for our land, rivers, seas, oceans, mountains, we must care. And we deliver a better Earth to the next generation.
The third option and the worst option is we give a worse, worse than now Earth to the next generation. That doesn’t take much time. All you have to do is to live insensitively, use and misuse the Earth, which we are already doing. We have cut down all the trees. We have ransacked all the resources of the oceans, and the land and the rivers. We have lived in insensitively.
And even now, we are teaching our children to compete with each other, and win at any cost. What do you win? What do you gain? Some material wealth, some qualification, something which is tangible which the senses can understand.
Are we teaching our children to be contented, to be happy, to be peaceful?
No. We are creating the new generation as bricks on the wall. We are trying to make them like bricks on the wall with no identities.
7.5 billion people in the world, how many people you know?
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. We do not remember; we do not know. And when the next generation comes, that generation wouldn’t even remember this generation. Of course, they would remember us for making this Earth what it is today.
These technological growths in the last hundred years have ruined the Earth, much more than the last 30,000 years. The last hundred years, if you take, it has degraded the Earth, much more than 30,000 years.
So what technology are we talking about?
The increased technology or the growth of technology has often created more damage than the good. We probably have more lifespan; we are living longer than the previous generations.
But what are we living for? More exploitation? More devastation?
This is what we are offering the Earth, this is how we are doing it. Insensitive life, insensitive. This needs a total change. That’s why I always say we need fewer policemen and more counsellors who can bring sense to people in this world. You know, we are actually looking at crime and punishment. That’s not to be looked at. We should look at the mental state of people starting from the children, all the way to the senior citizens. We need to look at people.
What have you done in this world, in all your life?
I ask this question. Your net worth on Earth is based on what you have contributed to the Earth, not what you have taken from Earth. Your network is what you have given to Earth, not what you’ve taken from Earth. If your net worth is zero in that manner, start now. Make a change now. Make a difference now.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan