Never Say Die…

I often think it is harder to fig­ure out one’s own reac­tions to cer­tain events than it is to solve a com­plex math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem. I envy those enlight­ened ones who claim to “know them­selves” as that’s one knowl­edge I would cer­tainly like to gain. This reflec­tion stems from the events of the past week. I had been highly moti­vated to work in the lab last week. So much so that I spent days and nights in the lab for all days of last week. Sun­day was another story though. I went on a hike to Avatar Grove, an ancient for­est which stares extinc­tion due to the cal­lous atti­tude of the provin­cial gov­ern­ment of British Colum­bia towards old=growth forests. They com­mu­ni­cate in usual gov­ern­ment speak which involves dis­torted and often igno­rant num­bers that are pro­truded in ways to jus­tify their course of actions. This hike was orga­nized by this fan­tas­tic vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion, Ancient For­est Alliance which I am very excited to be a part of. Avatar Grove is one spe­cial for­est that houses trees that have lasted hun­dreds (even up to a thou­sand) of years and form an intri­cate ecosys­tem that is teem­ing with life. There are very few of these old growth forests that still stand on this beau­ti­ful planet as gifts of nature. Rid­ding the land of these giants will add yet another crime to the end­less of lists of hor­rid crimes that we humans have com­mit­ted against mother nature.
As always, I ended up digress­ing on to an entirely dif­fer­ent issue from the issue at hand. So this visit to this ancient for­est with a group of con­cerned and active indi­vid­u­als was very refresh­ing. But the for­est as always intrigued me and left an impact that I am still reel­ing with. I feel this strong urge to quit what I am doing and go back to the jun­gle. Here I was, happy to be moti­vated about work­ing hard again, work­ing hard to make machines more impor­tant in our lives and find­ing more ways to arrest the remain­ing frag­ments of human­ity into the vir­tual worlds of zom­bie machines cre­ated by streams 0s and 1s and then there was one sin­gle encounter with mother nature that com­pletely blew me away. I feel like a sin­ner with no regret, an encroach­ing par­a­site who wants the com­fort of sleep­ing in mother nature’s lap but shies away from pro­tect­ing her. What am I to do?