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APLP SHARING
 

LOOKING INWARD AND GROWING IN ADAPTATION
 

R. M. Harshini de Silva Pandithasekera
APLP G11
Sri Lanka

 

I, as a 38 year old Sri Lankan woman, have lived through a 30 year war against terrorists in my island home, which ended only in 2009. Narrow shaves from terrorist attacks, bomb blasts and extended periods of schooling from home sans the online classrooms, were the norm of the day. Actual freedom of movement within my own homeland is a novel sensation I experience and I am grateful for it each day, as the whole of it continues to reveal itself to me even today. I lived through the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami which impacted Sri Lanka adversely. Although I was lucky to not have been in the face of it myself, I am grateful for having physically been present in the country when disaster struck, during a temporary break from College in India where I was pursuing my Bachelor’s at the time. It gave me the opportunity to ‘pitch in’ in the recovery efforts and witness my own people’s great capacity for shock absorption and resilience.
 
When Cyclone Roanu hit the Bay of Bengal in 2016, half a million people on the island got affected and I was able to help out with the data infrastructure, together with the country’s Disaster Management Centre. And when the Easter Attacks happened in Sri Lanka, we were expecting our daughter and it was disheartening to say the least… as I wondered if my baby would have to go through a similar life as mine in her childhood… all protected and under cover, unable to roam this beautiful island in complete freedom.
 
And now this… a global viral pandemic apparently witnessed by mankind every 100 years or so, had to appear during our lifetimes!
 
My now 14 month-old daughter is oblivious to all this. Having been born just two months before the virus was identified in Wuhan… she has spent her life so far mostly indoors, much much more than I would like. My frustration lies here… because I wanted her to swim in the sea and dance on the beach, experience the misty mountains and get bitten by leeches on treks to waterfalls. I always felt I was too late to start and that I won’t have enough time, and now I fear she too is running out of time!
 
But the reality is that our generation actually is no exception to unusual moments in time and unique experiences that changed the course of the life of every individual. I am sure each and every generation that lived its life on Earth went through phases which were unfamiliar to them, no matter the scale of their impacts on each person. Time and time again we face the unexpected and our first reactions are of disbelief, denial and angst. In the long run these emotions turn into fear and frustration of the continuous uncertainty and impermanence.
 
I want to share with you a few things which help me personally to overcome these feelings, whenever they do spring up in my mind at times one does not really expect.
 
I won’t call myself a Buddhist, however I won’t deny that I have been influenced heavily by the way of life pursued by Buddhists, considering the way in which most of my family and my country has been brought up. One essential doctrine of Buddhism is “Anicca”, which merely means that all aspects of life as well as inanimate objects, are impermanent. This truth helps us remember that man is in reality, powerless. Despite all achievements and milestones humankind has accomplished over time, this simple truth helps us bring ourselves down to understand that in the grand scheme of things, we are nothing but a decimal flick in time. And when such is true… what are our troubles? If we can always live in this truth, ‘problems’ disappear, and over time, we gather much strength to face every new challenge, boldly and without apprehension.
 
Another ‘truth’ that helps me in this situation is one that I learned during the course of becoming the Environmentalist I am. The concept of interconnectedness is a fundamental concept in Ecology which helps us understand that no one thing remains isolated from anything else. Be it the natural environment or the beings within, or the physical components of our surroundings that we deal with, everything is interconnected and impacts and influences in all ways. This helps us understand why we need to oblige with some common norms and practices during this time and may also be well into the future. Just as much as others’ actions and behavior affect us all, our behavior and/or misbehavior also impacts others and can be the deciding factor on whether the virus spreads further or is successfully contained.
 
‘Growing’ closer to my surroundings is another means by which I found a lot of peace and stability during the long drawn-out lockdowns experienced during this time. I live in the suburbs of the capital city of Colombo, in a house built on a land of about 5000 square feet of which a major portion has been left unbuilt purely to ensure a little relaxation with a small garden. My father’s vision for this piece of land was actually to create a tiny urban forest of vegetation which would attract birds and butterflies and provide for our family in terms of a portion of our food requirement, with minimum maintenance. Although this little gem of a plot had been long admired by visitors to our home, even to the extent of it being named as the “forest house” in secret by our neighbours, exploring it inch by inch evaded my attention for the longest time.
 
The Government of Sri Lanka initiated a country-wide home-gardening campaign early on during the Coronavirus pandemic and urged all citizens to start engaging in trying to make each household an origin of fresh produce which would help sustain local economies, at least until the tide was over. While our household was anyway in the habit of plucking out various types of food produce from our own garden, the lockdown and the Government movement provided me the impetus to actually step out and survey the entire place to do a simple audit of what I could find there. My findings actually surprised us all… almost 40 varieties of food plants including vegetables, fruits, yams, green leaves and spices! Going a bit further, with the help of my father, we also surveyed over 45 species of birds that visited our garden, including migrants who visit Sri Lanka seasonally! Unknowingly my own surroundings were affording me and my family a better quality of life and if one was to value it in monetary terms, the healing and the stability it created for my family would far outweigh any remedy that existed for purchase instead.
 
Excited by my findings, I was inspired to spend more time in the garden on a more regular basis, and found it also to be a great outlet for my daughter, who was unable to step outside of home to gather more worldly experiences. The treasures and small experiences she now finds from within our garden has made her a much more fearless and brave person than me already! Our regular journeys ‘in to the garden’ continue up to date and even on most nights.
 
I would not be able to conclude this message if I did not convey the single most valuable asset that we all have in our lives which has and must be made use of to overcome any troubles that we may face as individuals during this debilitating phase… our family. However big or small or connected or disconnected our families may be, I would urge all of you to grow closer to them, at least try. Use this time to really listen to one another and support each of them in their own difficulties. This helps us not to forget, but to actually overcome our own issues in dealing with feelings of anxiety and uncertainty by confronting them with much support. I don’t think any actor or doctor or therapist is actually able to provide us with the same level of entertainment, healing or acceptance and support that our families afford us.
If not the entire family, focusing on one individual at a time such as a parent, or a sibling, a partner or a child, will provide us a sense of having to face the challenge ‘together’, thereby immediately lowering the levels of anxiety and tension we may be feeling at this stage. In my case, my mother was my biggest strength, quite surprisingly actually, since we didn’t share the easiest relationship when I was growing up! The reassurance that ‘this too shall pass’ was constantly provided to me by her, in her own unique way of being stubborn about the situation and insisting that things will be back to normal soon so that she could head out on her jaunts when she could pick up something interesting or yummy for her granddaughter by herself!
 
Both my parents being over 70 years of age and made to feel even more caged up and limited due to their increased vulnerability to the virus, were no less than inspirational, in the way how they took to the situation like fish into water. They showed us how to focus inward, take pleasure in simple things such as the beauty of the process of a Red-vented Bulbul building a nest on the wall fan of the utility room or the lead up of the baby’s struggle to take her first steps, or the even the whiffs of well-made curries using groceries that were obtained with much difficulty, due to the lack of internet infrastructure experienced by the city dwellers, in terms of a robust e-commerce space.
 
I hope that through the experiences I faced during this pandemic and associated negative situations, I was able to provide you with some food for thought… in order to realize the impermanence of our being, to understand our interconnectedness to others, what we can gain from growing into our surroundings, and seeing value in our families and relationships. This is a time when an unprecedented situation has called for unprecedented actions, and learning to look inwards and grow in adaptation, has certainly proven its worth.