Bulgarian spring

I observed my body as I was lying completely quiet in the bath tub. It was only the second time I used the bath in the three years I live here. I prefer showering.

But today, I went in recovery mode. A sore throat and aches attacked me suddenly this afternoon, the onset of a cold probably. I quickly took additional vitamin c and echinacaea tablets, but for the most part, I was just quietly relaxing and tuning in to my body’s signals.

I observed that while I have good stamina to continue working when I am not feeling well, my system is telling me to slow down and reflect on regeneration, to pay attention to my body and physiological systems, and my energy levels.

And so I slowed down this evening after coming home, and observed how I felt, and how my body is reacting, and my mind as well. It is such an interesting experience to be one’s own observer. Strangely enough, then, I felt I have to write about it, in stead of just turning in early and sicking it out.

I was touched today by a small red and white cloth string worn around the wrist by my Bulgarian colleague at work. He told me it is an age-old custom in Bulgaria to wear this string in early March to mark the coming of spring. We both remarked how similar it looked to wrist strings worn in several Asian countries to celebrate spiritual and community connections.

So spring is coming, at least in the northern hemisphere, and with it ideas of freshness, new growth, new opportunities. Fertility too, perhaps.

A shocking contrast with my journey home this evening on a road full of smoke-belching buses. I thought of severely polluted cities in other parts of the world that have been able to clean up their act, like London with its infamous and deadly smog in decades past.

What would it take to see air quality on the roads improve in this city that I have called home for many years now? Laws exist but lack enforcement, and what action is attempted is circumvented by operators who seem to put their dirtiest smoke-belching buses on the road in the evening and night when it is dark.

I believe that the heart of development lies in people themselves, both individual and in organizations. But admittedly, I find it hard to imagine how the good efforts of so many citizens in this city can continue to be negated by the folly of a few who still refuse to take responsibility to care about the environment.

So the best for me would be to make sure that these noxious fumes will no longer enter my car, as they do at the moment since my air inlet seems to be malfunctioning. But today’s experience was a lesson about what pedestrians, jeepney passengers, and straphangers in buses suffer on a daily basis. How sad, and what a reminder of great opportunities for improvement.

Regeneration can come at all levels, in body and soul, and in organized society as well. Is that why people these days refer to civil society? I associate the word civil with the knowledge and ability to do the right thing, and to live inside out from love and care for ourselves and our fellow citizens.

Perhaps the bus operators in this city could be given a holiday in Bali and learn from the people there who innately believe in the importance of maintaining balance between people, the spiritual world, and the environment around them.

Meanwhile, regeneration can start everywhere, and all the time. And I experience my part of it now, even as I am not opening my mouth because of a sore throat.

And I salute the Bulgarian custom of celebrating the promise of regeneration by wearing a small red and white string on the wrist at the start of spring.


Photograph: Harmony in pond and bamboo, at the Ayala Museum.