“If you don’t know it, you won’t love it”
to understand what the environment means to me
There is a phrase in Indonesian: “Tak kenal, maka tak sayang”. If I translate it to English, more or less it means: “If you don’t know it, you won’t love it”. This phrase has been said to me, when my mother found out that I was fighting (verbally and emotionally — not physically) with friends at school. She used to calm me down by saying, “When you become angry, you don’t try to get to know her better. You have to know her more, so that you could become a best friend.”
There are so many suggestion about contribution we can do to save the environment from climate change. I instantly think about, “Alright, I’ll use less plastics and transition to be a vegan.” But honestly, I did not know which part of environment I should save. The whole earth? I am just one individual without any political power and authority. What does the environment even mean for me?
I was walking in the forest along the river last week. It was a good weather day in winter, 5-deg-Celcius outside, with clear blue sky above me. I took couple of deep breaths and I could feel the fresh air flowed and cleaned up my lungs. My brain suddenly loaded a memory from 10 years ago when I lived in the suburb of Jakarta, Indonesia. I just graduated from the university, got my first job about 30 kilometres from where I lived. Luckily, the company provided the company busses from several pick-up spots across the megacity.
The bus started at 6am to avoid the traffic in the highway. The office starts at 8am and ends at 5pm (or much later than that). In the morning, when traffic was fine, it took us around 45 minutes to reach the office. On the way back home in the late afternoon or evening, it could take between 1 and 3 hours.
Here is the thing, the bus had no air conditioner. To put into context why this point is important: the average temperature in the morning was 28-deg-Celcius, but late afternoon it could reach more than 30-deg-Celcius, with humidity between 70–80%. We had to open the sliding window to get some air (not fresh, but better than no air at all). Once I arrived at the office, I rushed to the restroom to wipe my face. The wipe was normally getting black spots.
Once I got home, it was always the same routine: take a shower right away and then stay inside my bedroom with the air conditioning (AC) that was running the whole night. Without the AC, breathing felt hard because of the heat and humidity altogether.
On the weekend, I met up some friends most of the time indoors —at the supermalls. We could spend hours being there: started at the coffee shop, then moved to a restaurant for lunch, got dessert from another coffee shop and probably watched a movie in the cinema. It was all comfortable inside the gigantic building. Funny thing: it is usually quite cold inside that I had to wear jacket inside the malls.
I imagined myself to be on that bus again, together with the polluted, hot, humid environment surrounds me. I never consider to be friend with it. I just want to hide as soon as possible into any room with AC. The lifestyle I followed did not encourage me to have the need of going to the real nature (that was in 2011 — probably it has changed for the better with younger generation now) .
Living in the capital city and the suburbs was tough. The traffic jam is part of our daily life. We have a saying, “We spend our lives (times) on the street.” Wearing a mask is not a new thing for us. Mask is important to reduce the amount of pollution from the air reaching our lungs. Other natural disaster (probably not so natural anymore) is annual flood.
The annual flood in the capital city and suburb areas has been there for years. What I have learned (and believed), that it was caused mostly by the poor drainage system. In addition to that, so many kind of wastes block the flow. People improve the house construction to be higher and to have better blockage water walls. The new data shows that the ground level is sinking because we took more ground water than we should, while the sea level is rising.
That was environment meant for me. The environment is a complex system with so many layers of problem that no one knows how to solve, how to contribute to make it better, even where to start as an individual.
In my late 20s, I started to be exposed to the real nature, thousands kilometre away from home, in the northern hemisphere. It took some years for me to adapt the new recreation style: enjoying the nature outdoor. It was a drastic change from enjoying the yummy culinary inside the supermalls, to do physical activity outside under the sun — also once during snowstorm. Then I thought, “Huh, probably this is the environment that the scientists are talking about.”
It brought a new realization about how complex it is to talk about climate change and environmental problems, then to convince people to act on it. I see the topic becomes so personal, as we talk about religion. We can say we follow the same religion, yet, we can discuss for hours about what it means to each of us. How are we able to discuss about environment if we are living in a totally different environment? Have everyone ever thought the meaning of having a good environment, and the meaning of losing it one day? How we can convince people who has never been outside, and they are actually living comfortably with human made environment — modern apartment complex, cooling systems, indoor sport facilities, and so on?
I am not an activist, but I still would like to influence people with minimum effort. After some years being trained to enjoy the nature, I started new hobby captured more pictures from my trip. The pictures without my selfie on it, intended to only promoting the nature beauty. I hope these pictures could invite the viewers to learn about the environment and nature that they can still enjoy, somewhere.
I was born, grew up, and lived in Indonesia for 23 years. During my young-adult life there, the internet was not really present yet, and I was still financially dependent. I think that was the reason why I was not hooked by travelling concept.
One time on my trip back home as an adult and financially dependent person (finally!), I had a trip to get to know my country outside Jakarta. I travelled to Jogjakarta region, in Central Java, which has a good proportion for culture, culinary, and nature tourism. One the way, we stopped and took this picture below. The view that I used to see in the school books about agriculture system in Indonesia: terrace (earthworks) (in Indonesian: terasering). I took this picture and starred at it for some time. “If only I was exposed to the real nature environment since young age and could appreaciate it much earlier..”
I learned that environment is a natural thing that requires balance in order to survive. By being in the nature, I learn that as part of ecosystem, human is not the biggest and most important out of the system. The give-and-take concept has to be applied between us and the environment. I have received a lot from it, as return, one of my resolution this year is to avoid using plastics and to eat less meat. For the first week of the year, I am doing it quite well :)
