Variety of LIFE

All around us, we see so many colors, different faces and a great deal of abundances. As I went through the children section in the bookstore last evening, I found this wonderful book simply entitled "Wildlife Atlas: A complete guide to animals and their habitats" by John Farndon. In the introduction section, John Farndon's first sentence were "Perhaps uniquely in the universe, our planet teems with life". In that sentence alone, I could relate to Mr. Farndon right away and I could not agree more.

The cover

As you can see, I was going through the children section to find something interesting for my little baby. I like the children section because it is where innocence and creativity can be found most. I find myself going through less complicated materials and it brings me back to the basics. I found this book very interesting because the author has carefully included very accurate and detailed information of animals and their habitats accompanied by very nice illustrations of them too. I then asked my wife what she thinks about it and how our little 21 months old daughter would like it. She said bluntly that Beth may take another 2 years or so to understand it. I made up my mind right away that I have got to get this book. Why?

I told my wife that, based on her response, I felt that it has become mandatory for me to get this book. It is very simple. In another 2 years time there would be a new edition of this book and Beth would only be able to see 50% of what the author has written thus far. You see, in another 2 years time, it would be quite possible that half the species featured in this book may well be extinct. And the reason I must get this book is because, in the next 2 years when my daughter is able to understand, I would like her to know how abundant our earth was 2 years ago when I bought this book.

The book writes about how each species is important to the larger ecosystem and each species has a role to play in our planet. I guess the greatest role and responsibility lies in the hands of us, humans. We have seen documentary after documentary telling us about 1 thing - Global Warming. At this very moment, I must say that we are experiencing the warmest temperature for the longest time thus far. I am personally feeling the heat in the heart of urban Klang Valley. And if you ask me, without a doubt, it bothers me very much.

I believe very much that though very different we are as individuals, like every species of animal, we have a role to play. We could do our very little and collectively contribute a great deal in the larger picture. For the past months, I have seen a great deal of variety of ways people raise rabbits. We have the politically corrects who are quick to jump on their wits when rabbits were abused or used as delicacies to breeders culling for perfections and farmers raising rabbits for food. At each different spectrum, every individual have their own stands and judgments. If you think about it, even in rabbits, there could be so many varieties and this is but a small part of how multi faceted our lives are. Taking away the varieties could mean a life less colorful.

And then we have road users who love to throw bottles out of their car windows and dog owners that do not pick up after their dogs. Well, it takes a lot to make a civic minded community. Our lives still go on as much we hate the fact that there are people with different ideologies around us. As long as we do not impose our ideologies into another, I believe our lives are otherwise peaceful.

What I really trying to say here is that, we could always move forward to make our lives and our earth a better place no matter how different we are. We just need to do certain things in different ways to achieve the same objectives. There are more than 1 way to recycle a bottle as long as we do not throw it out of the window while we're driving. There could be more than 1 way we could pick up after our dogs as long we do it. There is definitely more than 1 way to keep our rabbits healthy as long we do it.

We could save our planet we call home as long as we reduce, reuse and recycle.

Or else there could be more than 1 way how we leave this planet - we starve, we suffocate or we melt to death?