I’m not sure why I have Eagles songs running through my head as I’m re-reading my India journal. I’m sure there’s a cosmic reason for that but it has yet to strike me. I’ll get back to you on that.
India is a land of contradictions. It is at once limitless in its diversity and possibility and yet it tested my personal limits every moment of every day. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, or at least had figured out the tiny footprint of ground I happened to be standing on at any one time, it would flip head over heels into a different realization.
One concept of limits that India revealed to me was the idea that every object has a full life.
“In India,” Jose said, “we use everything until the end of its life.”
Indians don’t run out and get everything bright, shiny, and new because there’s a sale or just because they feel like it. They replace items when they need replacing, and not a moment sooner. In the mainstream throw-away American culture, we’re more likely to toss something away because we’re tired of looking at it than we are to use it until it’s used up. We’re changing our ways, some more quickly than others, but we’re a long way off from collectively using everything we have until it’s no longer useful.
I love the idea of honoring everything we have for the lifespan it’s intended to have. It’s caused me to think and re-think my own buying and tossing habits. In actuality, we don’t need much in the way of possessions to get by and what we do have we should use to its full extent.
This is the thing that stunned me more than anything else about India: in the smallest of moments lie the greatest of lessons.
Christa Avampato 