Gratitude For Clean Water, Air, And Mother Earth

Moving around and living in many different Asian countries, I am realizing how lucky I was to have clean drinking water from the tap, and clean air to breathe in everyday in Toronto, Canada. It's a blessing that I didn't appreciate enough when I was there and I thought I would share this gratitude with the world over through these words.

Please note: This audio is ripped from a video blog.

Transcript

Hey guys,

I hope that you guys are doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm really grateful that you guys are listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I appreciate the support.

My black eye is still here as you can see a little bit but I think it should be gone in a couple of days.

And if you guys want to support me further you can do that by going to my Ko-fi or Patreon link they're both in the description below.

I wanted to show you guys part of what my apartment looks like,

My condo as you can see in the background.

There is the pool that I never,

Almost never use.

I think I've used it twice or three times in the six months I've been here.

It's terrible I know.

Anyways,

It's nice to look at at least.

And this is just the lobby area where you pass by in order to go into the building.

So today I wanted to speak to you guys about gratitude and how I've been kind of discovering new random new things to feel gratitude for in the past few months I would say.

I think it's months.

I never really actually thought about these couple of things before as a source of gratitude for me in my life because I guess I lived in areas where they were abundantly available and I didn't have to worry about it in the past.

But now they're becoming more and more scarce and something that I have to think about on a daily basis.

And so I'm feeling more and more gratitude for these two particular items that as I said in the past I never thought about.

I never gave them two seconds of thought and now it's becoming more and more poignant and more interesting and more something more that I think about.

And a couple of them as I said are fresh air fresh breathable air and fresh drinking water.

Now I've always lived in for the past 17 years I lived in Toronto so I never really had to worry about clean drinking water there or clean air.

The air there is very fresh.

The regulations on the cars and the traffic and the factories are very strict of course.

The standard of living is very high and also the water that comes from the tap is absolutely drinkable unless you worry about fluoride and that's really easy to take out from the water.

So you know I never worried about that couple of things when I was back in Toronto.

Even before that I never even thought about it because back then pollution wasn't that much of a big deal in my youth I guess.

And now I'm sitting here obviously living in Thailand and I love Chiang Mai and I've told you guys this I love Chiang Mai to death.

I'm not berating it or blaming it or complaining about it.

But I'm really I really do notice a change in the way I look at clean drinking water and the way I look at clean breathable air.

I think I've spoken to you guys before about smoky season.

So there are these few months I would say four months.

It starts around end of January so February March April May almost until June so four months February March April May.

So those four months basically what happens is that the farmers start burning crops and there is this smoky season where basically a thick layer of smog smog and smoke covers the city especially because we're in a bowl like valley area.

So it's very hard for the air just kind of descends upon us and it's very hard for the air to move around or there's not a lot of breeze either it's hot.

And so it just sits there and we're literally just sitting in a fog of polluted air of smoke basically smoke that comes from crops being burned in order to plant new crops.

Now there's a lot of politics associated with it and agricultural craziness and traditions that I'm not going to speak about.

But in this particular video I just want to speak to you guys about how every single day I would get up during smoky season and check the AQI which is the air quality index.

And those days where it was below 400 I would just sit there think okay that's great it's a good day today.

I mean actually I mean I'd still wear a mask and still have an air purifier going but I think to myself all right good day good air quality better than normal better than before.

And now obviously it's not smoky season so right now they're not burning crops or if they are it's not that much so that it results in us not being able to breathe.

There's not that much smoke or smog in the air.

Pretty much there is obviously pollution and you can tell the AQI is not perfect not green.

But it is reasonable.

But the fact that I actually even think about these things when I get up in the morning the first thing I do now is not check Facebook.

Maybe that's a third or fourth thing but the first thing I do is I check the air quality index.

I'll sit down and I'll look at the app on my thing on my phone and look at what the AQI looks like.

Something that I would never ever have thought about previously.

That's something that I've never ever thought about really.

And so it's really interesting to me how something like that something that has been out of my consciousness out of my consciousness realm in the past has become such an important part of my daily routine.

And throughout the day I will check the AQI index just to make sure that everything's fine.

Do I need to wear a mask.

Do I need to take extra precautions etc.

Right.

Again something that I would never have thought about previously but something that has become a part of my daily routine now.

The second thing obviously is clean drinking water and a lot of people in Thailand I think or in Chiang Mai drink the tap water.

They say that you get used to it you know all those contaminants and that eventually or the germs and then you get used to it and you don't have to worry about it.

But I've always been a little bit careful about that stuff.

I really don't want my liver cleaning out more things than it already has to.

And so obviously I get water delivered and then I use a Brita water filter and things like that.

Another thing that was completely out of my consciousness realm something that I never even thought about something that I didn't need to think about of course right.

I would just have a glass of water.

I mean I would be able to turn on the tap tap put water in it drink it without even thinking about okay what's in the water here and am I able to drink it or is it something that is feasible for me or healthy for me to do you know drinking tap water things like that.

But now of course every single drink of water that I take here I think about the fact that I'm grateful that I have the capability or the capacity to clean up that water.

And again things that I would never have thought about before are now a daily source of I wouldn't say consternation necessarily just daily source of thought of consciousness of questioning is this is this good enough is the air good enough can I go outside.

Even doing these videos outside I am always checking the AQI to make sure that I'm actually I can stand outside for such a prolonged period of time without wearing a mask.

I've shown you guys I think a picture of me in the mask and it looks pretty forbidding and so I try not to wear it as much as possible because it does seem like a little bit crazy because no one else wears it obviously no one else right now in this moment in time is wearing a mask maybe I'm just being extra paranoid.

But I do as I said I do notice a difference when the air quality is bad I do notice that I get extra margarines my stomach aches a little bit more I just get random aches and pains things that are not explainable by anything else and as soon as the air quality goes back to normal I notice that all those random pains and aches kind of get alleviated automatically so obviously this I believe there's some kind of connection there.

Also I also do realize that most people do not consider or think about their lungs as much as we consider or think about our hearts our heart health or our brain health I think we think about our brain and heart more than we think about our lungs our lungs are just you know doing their own thing and we just leave them to it we don't think about okay maybe I should help them out a little bit right.

The only reason I obviously think about it a little bit more is because I've lived in Chiang Mai where the air quality is so bad that I have to take care of it but also because of the fact that I did yoga and pranayama is a big part a big part and parcel of being a yogi is you have to pay attention to your breath and deep breathing deep belly breaths is a big part of it right so obviously that's one of the reasons why I really do pay attention to it.

So I just wanted to share this with you guys I just thought it was interesting that I think as time goes on it won't just be me who thinks about air quality or water quality things of that I think as time goes on a lot of people that I speak to in different countries not only in Thailand Singapore I have students are contributors in Singapore that talk about the fact that the air quality there is really bad London when I visited my friend in London she talked about the fact that they use diesel a lot of the cars use diesel and therefore the air quality there is very is getting bad as well and so things like that is I don't think I think it's just in general I think this is these couple of things are going to become sources of consternation or sources of problems in the future because we're not paying attention to it now doesn't mean that we won't have to in the future.

So again I thought I'd share this with you guys I hope that you found it useful I always like sharing random things about my life here because a lot of people obviously don't know all the different parts and parcels of living in a different country especially in an Asian country like this I think there's so many different aspects to it that I didn't know about when I actually first moved in and I'm realizing and learning slowly.

If you guys have any questions obviously please let me know in the comments below and I'll expand on it and of course if you want to support me further you can do that by going to my Ko-fi or Patreon link they're both in the description below and I shall see you guys next time around.

Bye for now.

Reviews

I have filtered my water for over 20 years now but unfortunately we don't have control of the air quality unless we move, which is very sad.