Blind Awareness

          As I sit here writing this I can hear the sounds of the birds playing in the trees, the water running along in the creek below, and can take a deep breath of sweet fresh air. I look up to see a beautiful mountainside covered in green trees and bush. Then I hear the trucks pass horns blaring on the road just ahead, and my thoughts are carried with the truck speeding towards the city center. I see trash littered everywhere, and can smell burning plastic as another truck speeds past spouting a huge diesel cloud right where I am standing. I begin to think about blind awareness. Travelers often have a saying: "There is the rest of the world, and then there is India". As you walk the streets in India you cannot help but wonder about this blind awareness that all Indians seem to take when it comes to the environment. 

 One of my peers brought up in class one day why people here cannot see the difference between their own space, and the greater space when it comes to getting rid of rubbish. I have witnessed it countless times while being here in Rishekish (one of the cleaner cities in north India), people simply throwing their trash onto the street directly in front of them. I do not understand why people here cannot distinguish the difference between "their" space and a space for trash. People will sweep up the steps to their shops to make it clean and presentable, only then to eat potato chips and throw the bag in street in front of the shop. How does this make any sense? 

Then, I began thinking how nice it is to have a trash system at home in the US, but even though the system is in place where does my trash go? To a big heap 5 miles outside of the city? Is the system I know really any better? The Indian's might have a blind awareness to what is right in front of them on the streets, but in reality don't we all have a blind awareness to the waste we put out there? Just like the Yakshasas and their king Kubera in Indian mythology, we consume, consume, and still want more need more. What about all our waste? I learned today that there is little difference between what I see here in India, and the way we "get rid" of our waste anywhere else in the world. There is only a different concept of space. We are all the same in so many ways...it was only as I began to travel the world that I see we all have this blind awareness. All space is "our" space, and we are no different than our neighbors.