US AND HARMONY

Do you remember passing your University Entrance Exam? Along with the joy and relief comes the concern of what the new experience will be like. Despite how exciting change is, it can be a little uncomfortable; one of the things that you will definitely have to face is the fact that you will be getting a new roommate😝! You have absolutely no idea what they are like; are they neat and tidy? Are they quiet or noisy? Do they snore? Will they be kind and friendly or are they a grouch with whom you can’t ever hold a conversation? Then you meet and together you begin to build parameters and set boundaries, they say to you; “Mesho* I don’t appreciate your using my plates and not cleaning them afterward”, or you say to them “Mesho* please don’t keep your radio on all night, it disturbs my sleep” and so on and so forth. What you and your mesho* are looking to achieve is a state of harmony.

The Oxford English dictionary defines harmony as “The state of being in agreement or concord” or “The quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole”, and because you and your mesho* are going to live together for quite a while, you certainly want to attain a certain state of harmony. Harmony is seemingly easier to achieve with other human beings because they can tell us their likes or dislikes, that is if the communication channels are working well.

We share the planet with numerous other beings, human beings are not necessarily the owners of it, but we do have the charge of a steward, we are the caretakers of the same. We live with animals and trees and other inanimate beings that benefit from us and us from them. In it pure state the world is a beautiful place, no we can’t deny that it can get very gloomy when a lion eats bambi* or when hyenas eat rabits, yet it is never without or out of some irrational desire to destroy, it is an understandable need to survive due to the preying animals’ constitutional needs and other times it is out of fear. Naturally, beings don’t consume other being when they aren’t hungry or do not perceive threat; a snake won’t eat another creature when it is full or has just eaten.

 Human beings behave the same way, arguably it is beneath reason for people to ill-treat other animals for no reason, having the responsibility of stewardship we are to ensure that animals are well taken care of. Our co-existence with other beings is dependent on laws or principles of harmony, look at it this way; if we choose to abuse our environment with time, our race will suffer the consequences of the same.

Humans must choose to execute our role as caretaker, looking after nature to ensure that harmony is achieved, this is why humans must be concerned with animal welfare; we are responsible for our habitat. Some may ask who gave us the responsibility of taking care of the planet. Simple, God did, and if you don’t believe in God then look at it this way; reason and logic entrust us with this responsibility because we see the need for the continuity of our planet and our race, we therefore cannot deliberately deplete it or watch as others do.

*Mesho means roommate especially used in Malawian colleges

* Bambi is a cartoon character who is a deer