After we swipe away

 After We Swipe Away

I was looking at the pictures from Nepal today.

A family standing in front of what was once their home. Walls gone. Belongings scattered. The familiar suddenly made unfamiliar.

I stopped scrolling.

For a few seconds.

Then my thumb moved.

And I went on.

That small movement has stayed with me.

Because what happened in those few seconds? I felt sad. I felt helpless. I thought about those families and wondered what it must feel like to lose the place you call home, perhaps in a matter of hours.

And then I continued with my day.

Perhaps that is the strange contradiction of our times. We have never had so much access to the suffering of others, and yet we have become remarkably good at moving past it.

A photograph appears.

We pause.

We feel.

We scroll.

Another tragedy appears.

We pause again.

And then we move on.

I don’t say this as an accusation. I do it too.

In fact, that is what troubles me most.

I am very good at feeling concerned. But what am I doing beyond feeling concerned?

That question is harder.

Because nature has been giving us reminders for years. Floods. Fires. Heat. Disappearing forests. Rivers struggling under the weight of what we put into them.

We see the images. We discuss them. We express our shock.

And then we return to our lives.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that we don’t know.

We know.

We have known for a long time.

Perhaps the problem is that knowing has become too easy.

We can know about a forest disappearing while sitting comfortably in a room made possible by the resources taken from somewhere else. We can watch a family lose its home and, moments later, order something we don’t really need. We can read about a polluted river and continue consuming as though everything we discard simply disappears.

And I am part of that contradiction.

So I have begun asking myself smaller, more uncomfortable questions.

How much of what I consume do I actually need?

How often do I choose convenience simply because it is convenient?

What happens to the things I throw away?

How much of my day disappears into a screen?

When was the last time I planted something and cared enough to watch it grow?

These may sound like insignificant questions when placed beside a destroyed village.

But perhaps that is where responsibility begins.

Not with grand declarations.

With noticing.

With interrupting our own convenience.

With recognising that every comfortable choice has a consequence somewhere, even if we don’t see it.

We often speak about saving the planet as though the planet is a helpless thing waiting for us to rescue it.

But perhaps that is the wrong way to think about it.

The planet will continue.

It existed long before us.

It will, in some form, exist after us.

The more frightening question is whether we will continue to have a place on it if we keep treating it as though its resources are infinite and its patience unlimited.

We have become remarkably capable of changing nature.

We cut forests.

We cover the earth with concrete.

We alter landscapes.

We push animals out of their habitats.

We reshape rivers and coastlines to suit ourselves.

And somewhere along the way, perhaps we confused our ability to change things with our ability to control them.

We cannot.

A few hours of relentless rain can remind us.

A landslide can remind us.

An earthquake can remind us.

Suddenly, the things we considered permanent are not permanent at all.

Our buildings, our roads, our possessions, our carefully organised lives can become frighteningly fragile.

And perhaps that is not nature being cruel.

Perhaps it is simply nature reminding us that we are not separate from it.

We are dependent on it.

The air we breathe.

The water we drink.

The soil that feeds us.

The trees that shelter us.

The countless forms of life we rarely notice because they are simply part of the background of our existence.

We don’t have to save nature from some distant threat.

Perhaps we need to learn how to stop disturbing the balance that allows us to exist alongside it.

I don’t have a grand solution.

I still waste things.

I still choose convenience.

I still spend too much time looking at a screen.

I am not writing this from a place of having figured it all out.

I am writing it because I am beginning to realise that feeling bad about something is not the same as taking responsibility for it.

And perhaps that is what those pictures from Nepal have left me with.

Not just sadness.

A question.

A deeply personal one.

What am I doing?

The photograph will disappear from my screen.

I will swipe.

Another image will take its place.

Life will continue.

But somewhere, a family is still standing in front of a home that no longer exists.

And that is the part I don’t want to scroll past.

Because perhaps caring is not measured by how deeply a photograph moves us.

Perhaps it is measured by what we change after the photograph is gone.

What do I do after I swipe away?