Modern technology has changed our lives in so many incredible ways. Six years ago, I was able to visit a country so far away that it took me two days to reach by air. I flew for 23 hours in an economy class seat, and somehow the distance that I traveled caused another day to pass in the hours that I spent stretching my ankles and listening to the kid in the seat next to me snore as loudly as the jet engines in the 747. The plane was so large, that it had an upstairs, not that I got to tour the plane, the snoring kid next to me fell asleep as soon as the plane took off, and I spent 13 pressurized hours in my window seat watching the sun rise, afraid to to move and wake the snoring monster. I dozed off in the last twenty minutes of the flight, and woke up in Sydney Australia. I spent three months as a chef for the Athlete's Village at the 2000 Summer Games, I met some incredible people, some who will be lifelong friends, I drank the best beer in the Known Universe. The 2000 Summer Games were the least watched in the US because of the time difference, but they were the first ever to be called the "Green Games".
One of my jobs at the Sydney Olympics was to do part of the new hire orientations. There were 2000 employees that I had to teach in groups of ten. I would take them on a tour of the massive kitchen, give them safety training on some of the equipment, and then give them what I called "Trash Training". The goal was to be able to recycle everything, all of our paper products were biodegradable, we separated all of our waste into different colored bins, plastics and glass, food waste to the farmers, metals in a different container. It took a few weeks to get it right, we got in trouble a few times from the Trash Blokes who would yell at us for mixing food with paper, but eventually we got it right.
In Adelaide Australia, as far south on the planet as I have ever traveled, I drank my first glass of unfiltered rainwater from a tin tub on top of a friend's garage. I was kind of freaked out, I worried about acid rain and the lack of chlorine to kill the tiny micro-organisms that might harm me, but I was thirsty, and that was all there was to drink, and here I am still alive to tell the story.
Modern technology has changed our lives in many positive ways, but I believe it has also harmed us. I also believe that there is a spiritual world, a world of a more primitive nature that speaks to us in ways that we don't always understand. And maybe sometimes the connection between the two worlds comes as a surprise, or a dream, or a warning, and I believe that we need to pay close attention to those primitive things that the earth is telling us. I'm not talking about an "End of Days" scenario, but things that we know to be true because science tells us that it is true, and we can see the evidence with our own eyes.
I had this dream the other night, that I was walking around in the melting polar caps. I was trying to make my way back to a ship that was warm and dry. I was up to my waistline in slush, I was shivering and unable to get warm. I found my way back to a ship, and my friend Jules from Australia was there, with a space heater and warm blankets. The dream was so real, that I remember vividly my teeth chattering in the cold, and the warmth of the blankets. I didn't know what the dream meant, but it left me with enough of an impression, that I shot an e-mail off to my friend Jules who lives on the other side of the planet. She called me on my cell phone, and while the time differences screwed me up for a few days, we finally got a chance to talk, thanks to the miracle of modern tele-communications, and a five dollar phone card.
My friend Jules is an amazing woman. She gets it. I had this huge infatuation with her way back in Sydney (even though she is straight) because she is so completely without malice, and she is totally tuned into those primitive things that the Earth tells us in dreams. For those of us who have to think about the things that the Earth is telling us, those of us who are not tuned into the spiritual world, we have science that tells us the same thing. The planet is warming. There is no question, it is a fact. Rivers are drying up, you only need to look at the Western part of the United States to know that it is a fact. In many parts of the world, in many parts of Africa, there is not enough fresh water for children to even wash their hands, and therefore not enough water to prevent the spread of disease. And the fresh water continues to melt into the sea, compounding the problem further, and making reclamation of fresh water nearly impossible.
I have family in Arizona who may have a difficult time ahead. And while they will always be welcome here at my home, I want to tell them to drain the swimming pools and save that water for a time that they may not have any. I want to tell them to stop watering the golf courses, that water will someday be needed to sustain the lives of the generation that comes after us. The easy life that we know today will soon dry up, and maybe this time, technology will not save us.
Listen to your dreams, listen to your heart, and know that the life we are living now is not sustainable.
