Who decides when a woman will have her bleeding cycles, It’s purely a decision of her body that runs on synchronicity as complex as the movements of the planets. It’s an ancient gift that she has gotten from her ancestors. When no one can decide our sacred cycles then how delusional is it to pass laws that decide a women’s right to give birth or abort a child.
No One Owns: The Air I Breathe and the Seed Sow | Priyanka Singh
No one owns the land and the trees, the birds and the bees, all the oceans and the seas. Everything that grows on this land ultimately belongs to the land. In the longer run, there is nothing that you can take from the Planet. We feed on various resources but in the end when we face our demise, our body starts to decompose, we fertilize the land with our bodily nutrients, and another cycle of life begins from everything that we are made of. This is a fascinating cycle of endless continuity, we all are infinite. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only altered in form. We are the energy that is recycled in one form or another. Death and demise are not particularly as harsh as it appears from a distance. The reason I have been focusing on this particular perception of demise is to reach an understanding of ownership. Ownership by definition means ‘the act, state, or right of possessing something’, we live in a world where ownership and boundaries of understanding of what we can have as ours are getting blurred.
If our body belongs to the Earth what we can truly own. The land has become a part of a real state to be bought and sold, animal life is ending in the product cycle and new laws are being passed every day to exert control.
I’m Priyanka Singh, EIC and founder of Planted Journal. I’m here to share my understanding of ownership. Who decides when a woman will have her bleeding cycles, It’s purely a decision of her body that runs on synchronicity as complex as the movements of the planets. It’s an ancient gift that she has gotten from her ancestors. When no one can decide our sacred cycles then how delusional is it to pass laws that decide a women’s right to give birth or abort a child.
With the current climatic conditions, pregnant women, newborns and elders are the most vulnerable groups. We are still unable to comprehend the US abortion ruling over Roe v Wade. On the other hand, the current restriction on the role of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is only going to make this situation more complex. The US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (world population review) and this ruling will have an impact on the global air quality. The enactment of such laws and the correlation between these two shows the lack of overall awareness. We are struggling for a fresh breath of air, heat waves are becoming more frequent and at this point of our existence, we cannot afford such blindsided decisions.
A report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that a child born today will be living in an environment that is more than four degrees warmer than the average temperature during the preindustrial period and will experience significantly more frequent and intense environmental disasters such as heatwaves, wildfires, and hurricanes. Dehydration, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease and heat strokes can become more common due to wildfires, drought and hurricanes. People are already forced to leave their current settlements due to these environmental hazards and moving during pregnancy can be even riskier. The cost of living is higher now, education is expensive and the current mortality rate is at the stake. The resources are becoming scarce and we never seem to have enough for the people who are already existing on this planet. How we can afford new life without considering climate change, what is the legacy we will leave behind.
The Earth has been personified as the mother in various mythology, with her continuous breath of winds there are changes in seasons and temperature that eventually lead to eroding of mountains into dust. These occurrences cannot be possessed by us mere humans, we can be a catalyst but not a regulator of the indicated events.
Our rhythms are not guided by these laws and orders that are created and dictated. The air is ours to take care of, so is the land and so is the sea. It belongs to us as a community and this community is not limited to human beings but also to all that is existing and will exist in the future. It’s upon us to become aware, to be a positive catalyst of change and not let such laws decide our future. As an individual, we might not be invincible but as a collective, we can be. We all are a part of this current climatic revolution. The revolution has many aspects a few starts on the streets and there are a few that start within. Self-realization and creative exploration of nature-based art, poetry, and music is a step forward in winning this struggle.
‘Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us’ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photography by Gloria Pasotti from her series ‘Gli Eredi delle Terra’ and ‘40 DAY DREAM’ @gloriapasotti
Words by Piyanka Singh @Priyanka.Parihar16
