(photo by: Elizabeth Lies via Unsplash)
Imagine your most ideal
house. Close your eyes, take a deep breath
If I may assume, most of us would want to live in a cozy house with a beautiful garden (wide or small).
Where is it?
Where is it?
Is it next to a beach? On
a mountain? Near the city? Apartment? Or in peaceful suburban area?
One thing in common is,
it must be standing on a land.
I’ve always been
thinking, we human, always in the need of more and more land.
In Indonesia in
particular, even rice fields are more likely to be converted to be line ups of
house clusters.
More lands for housing, business,
industry, entertainment, big buildings, etc.
We got more building needs
that we should establish.
Have we ever thought that
we are the only (I must
underline and bold) species that has 100-stories-or-more buildings, wide spacious
basements and etc. We inhabit possibly everywhere on earth (both land and on sea), as long we could attain the
resources.
Where does it leave other
species? we’ll always think of them as a disturbance and a pest, a cockroach on
our bathroom, a group of ants in our sweets, mosquitoes that just won’t quit, rodents
that are stealing our food, flies that exist for the indicator of whether something
disgusting is on the radar, or grass on our lawn that keeps persistently growing
and trees which roots are breaking our floor? We can name them, they’re so many.
Have we ever thought that
we might be also disturbance to their natural habitat, their ecosystem? That we
dominate their ‘house’ first?
Have we ever thought or
even assess about what would happen to the existing ecosystem if we
build something in some land? Honestly, I myself haven't.
We forgot about them. We
forgot that we’re also an occupant in this earth.
What makes me sad and
confused the most are
we arrogantly admit ownership on every single bit of land
that we could find, we occupied every single space.
We change soil into ground, jungles into farms, prairie into parks, shrink nature and the whole ecosystem into lawn and garden, generalized and treat
land as something lifeless and inactive called lots.
We sell them and the
whole inherited ecosystem within. It is a matter of survival for other species,
whether they can survive to cohabit, move or die (or even extinct).
And we proudly say “I
have a lot of lot, my house is everywhere, they have big beautiful wide landscapes
and gardens” only roses, other beautiful plants and smartly disguised and
discreet animals that could survive in those gardens.
Aren’t we the richest
creature?
As I think that we should also consider to note is by
disrupting the land and the ecosystem, our live might also be affected. There
must be minor or major effect that will
get to us. Mostly it’s the short term beneficial profit and long term non-beneficial chaos.
I was reading Nat Geo on
Climate change issue 2015. They wrote about small house movement, the things
that i always think about small houses are:
1. Exciting
2. Energy efficient and
much greener
3. More affordable
4. It can be moved from time to time
5. More
independent.
However they wrote something which made me realize (what I think the most
profound reason, that it should be built) that it creates less distraction to
spend more time outdoor. It has more open wide space that we ever thought about
(if only we could shift our perspective, not inside out but outside in). It enable us to go into our real house, nature.
Less walls, less separation, more
connectivity with everyone and every beings.
If I ever remember
traditional houses in Indonesia. Most culture and tribes here don’t occupy lots
or wide closed space. It’s more connected to lawn, garden or even nature. One
of the best house system that I’ve ever learnt is Dooryard system, which
provides the endless cycle of energy. There’s a house, human, animal, and at
least two kinds of plants (shrubs and trees), the ecosystem is still maintained
however with human intervention. Though it’s still anthropocentric it still
acknowledge the role that’s being played by other species.
Let’s go
backward, let’s remember where and why we feel at home.
It can be about the person that will wait and be there with us.
But let’s dig deeper, don’t we
sometimes feel at home in somewhere irrelevant with traditional/conventional house
form?
Isn’t it more when we feel that we’re connected with something or someone,
and we feel a flow of love and positive energy toward us?
Let’s try to remember and
redefine our ‘home’, slowly.
I know that it’s a long process, I myself is still
on that journey to search the feeling of being at home and a sense of connectedness with more human, beings and nature.
