Pangea Day – Come Join Us!

“The biggest danger in our future is understanding the other and having mutual respect for the other” – Jehane Noujaim, the 2006 TED Price Winner

It is less than an hour and a half to go before Pangea Day films to be broadcast live at the same time all around the globe. The objective is to show how powerful films can be to unite today’s people, eliminating the barriers that exist among us.

It has been 23 years for me to live in this world, having met and continuously meeting people from all around the globe. This is the beauty of life – different people with different cultural background from different places. However, deep inside my heart I feel like there are still barriers for all of us to pleasantly smile and treat each other with respect. There is a saying that goes “you will become wiser as you grow older”, but I believe in “if you have no sense of appreciation in you, you are a fool in age”.

I could still remember when I was in kindergarten, the first day of my life meeting strangers. After just few hours, all of us became friends. We did not have any negative feelings towards each other, we smiled and we laughed together. Another stranger came by, and asked me bubbly “Hi, can I be your friend and can we play together?”. There was it, the time when someone wanted to be your friend he or she would just say it, and the other would just say “Yes” with a smile.

As I grow older, I have realised that the mind tends to be toxicated with negative, adulthood thinkings. Things are not as innocent and purely-hearted as before. We do not smile to strangers, we play the game and ‘trick of trades’ with others in the pursuit of selfishness, we would be very reserved to someone who wants to be our friend, we have our own gangs and this is childishly themed as “friends forever” but I would rather perceive it “we are friends forever, new people are not welcomed”, we envy someone who is trying to make the world a better place with reasons like “he just wants to be a hero”.

What is wrong with us? If we can adore Iron Man as a saviour in the film, why cannot we adore human beings who are willing to sacrifice time and making efforts to make this world a better place for us? Why are we taking things for granted and wasting time arguing whether global climate crisis is for real or not? Why cannot we just have a tiny.. a tiny piece of responsibility in loving our planet and care for it? We are willing to say “I love you, till death do us apart” to our partner but why cannot you love the planet as you love the former? Why do we perceive people who do not speak our language are not our friends and why cannot we treat strangers with a smile without any negative impression?

Our planet now is spinning dangerously on the race of FAME and MONEY. We forget about DIGNITY, RESPECT, PEACE and UNITY. We talked about The World Wars, The Great Depression 1928 and the current Financial Turmoil in the absence of moral and ethical values which are the easiest solutions for all of these ‘illusionary corporate dilemmas’. Yes, these are the corporate people who graduated with cum laude from top universities but lack the spirit of common sense. They become blind with profit-maximisation and ignoring the welfare of the societies. They become their own Frankensteins while observant and responsible artists, painters, and journalists who do not earn mountains of money like them are teaching the world the common sense of values in life.

Let us for once, look at the sky at night. Look at the stars. Imagine that we are the stars, glittering in the galaxy above. What do we want to see on the planet of Earth below? If I am one of the stars, I would like to see the happiness among all the people. Happiness in the sense that corporate people are being responsible and observant to the law of society, happiness in the sense that strangers smile to strangers, happiness in the sense that the Chinese are friends with the Spanish, the Latins are friends with the Asians, the French and the Germans, the Russians with the Europeans, the Americans are friends with Mexicans, the Arabs are friends with the Jewish.

Get rid of egoism, irrelevant pride, and negative impression that we have on others. Show our respect, listen and think before we speak. Appreciate people who help you in life even though you are not going to meet them again for the rest of your life, and say thank you. Remember how innocence we were in kindergarten, the time when we could just make friends with split seconds of a simple smile.

At the time of writing this, I have this thought in mind – I have spent half of 40 years of my lifetime living in a prejudice world full of hatred. Despite the craziness of the world, I make the effort to make friends from all over the globe. I learn a lot of things from them. I learn their languages, I learn the cultures, I learn their stories. There were times when I had to make the effort and lower down my veil but I did not regret as I believe in the art of dealing with people. If the people are good, bless me. If they are bad, I keep my distance and I hope they will change. And I believe I will continue learning from the beauty of different people till I reach 40 years of my lifetime living as a human being on this planet.

And I wish with this sense of common sense, this planet will become a better place for us to live. As Carl Sagan said in his Pale Blue Dot video of a tiny spot in the galaxy [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M] -

That’s here.
That’s home.
That’s us.
On it, everyone you love,
Everyone you know,
Everyone you ever heard of,
Every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of joy and suffering,
Thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines,
Every hunter and forager,
Every hero and coward,
Every creator and destroyer of civilisation,
Every king and peasant,
Every young couple and love,
Every mother and father, hopeful child,
Inventor and explorer,
Every teacher of morals,
Every corrupt politicians,
Every superstar,
Every supreme leader,
Every saint and sinner in the history of our species,
Lived there,
On a mode of dust,
Suspended in the sun beam.

http://www.pangeaday.org
http://www.climatecrisis.net

La vie est belle donc apprEciez-la = The life is beautiful thus appreciate it

Sharazad
10th May 2008
University of Nottingham, UK.