04/08/2021
A Message from Taste Vietnam Cares.
A Wish for Our Planet. Our People. Our Community.
On the eve of another lockdown here in Hoi An, it is important to reflect on the fact that for the most part, we have been able to enjoy a relatively normal life during the Pandemic. Naturally, the atmosphere of the town has changed since the tourists stopped coming, but in many ways Hoi An has returned to the peaceful old town it once was. Rather than mourn this event, we should use our time and energy to re-familiarise ourselves with what is truly important in life. Our friends, our families, our health.
In recent years, Hoi An has participated in the global ‘Earth Hour’ event, when citizens are encouraged to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for an hour, and while this is good in raising awareness of environmental issues, it makes little impact on the planet’s ‘health’. Under its Taste Vietnam Cares initiative, Taste Vietnam would like to encourage a Green Week, or better still, a Green Fortnight. This would ideally be an initiative under which citizens would be encouraged to minimise their effect on the planet by staying at home, minimising travel, reducing electricity and fossil fuel usage, exercising and eating a healthy diet - in essence a real ‘back-to-basics’ lifestyle. Through previous lockdowns, it has been demonstrated that staying at home for a month or more is not difficult so a fortnight should be a walk in the park.
Mindfulness is a word we hear often these days but for many people it somehow remains mysterious. In essence, it is the process of being aware. Aware of one’s body, aware of one’s mind, aware of one’s surroundings. To achieve this, we need to remove, or at the very least, minimise external complications and distractions. If you were to consider the bare minimum you need to live, it is actually very little. Let’s not forget that we have evolved from the amoeba - a single cell organism. How did we ever get to this point where our needs and wants were so excessive? When we live simply, we learn to truly really appreciate the small things in life.
Of course, we would need the right conditions in place to make this initiative work. It’s success would rely on everyone having enough food and provisions to last for this 2 week self-imposed ‘quarantine’ and this might require assistance from the government or other organisations. But rather than thinking of this ‘quarantine’ as protecting ourselves from the planet, let’s think of it as protecting the planet from us! For sure, the planet would benefit from a rest - during lockdowns globally, it was proven that it had benefitted from a short recovery from the effects of humans, so why not encourage this as a regular event?
This is something we can do for ourselves… we don’t have to wait for our leaders to take action. We hold our future in our own hands.
