Listening and Learning

I believe one of my superpowers is my ability to listen — to hear the truth spoken between words, to feel energies shared, and to sense deeper meanings expressed.

Here at Navdanya, every aspect of the heart and core of their work circles back to the power and importance of biodiversity. 

This is something I’ve both learned through my studies and understood through my own experiences — that the capacity for true sustainability, regeneration, and resilience on our planet lies with biodiversity. 

The biodiversity of the plants, animals, flora, fauna, insects, micro and macro organisms, and the relationships between all of them, are what allow for an ecosystem to live and thrive. They need the diversity of the other in order to live healthfully.

Humans are included in these ecosystems. 

In fact, the highest levels of biodiversity have been found in regions where Indigenous peoples lived. 

Even today, it is the regions where Indigenous peoples live that preserve the highest concentrations of biodiversity. It’s not the national parks or the untouched spaces, but the spaces where humans know they are a part of nature, not separate from it, where their way of life supports and enhances the life and breath of a place. 

In today’s world, we know the stories of human destruction on our planet — air and water pollution, depletion of natural resources, plastic waste, environmental degradation, deforestation, topsoil runoff, habitat and species loss… it seems at every corner something else has gone wrong at the hands of human impact.

We are, in fact, the only species to destroy its own habitat.

It’s exhausting to witness and devastating to be a part of. And I have often wondered, “How did indigenous peoples know? Where does this knowledge come from that is passed through generations and how did it begin?”

Turns out, the answer lies within one of my own innate gifts.

They listen.

They listen to the laws of the land that govern a space and dictate the measures for balance.

The listen for the permission of give and take.

They listen through reciprocity and give reverence for all that is.

So, I am here — listening and learning.

Absorbing all that I can in all ways that I can so that I carry the wisdom held here back with me to continue passing along.