Wisdom

What can I do for the future?
When I thought about that, what came to mind was the life of my grandparents.

When I was a child, I looked forward to taking the first bath of the day with my grandfather, who would come home drenched in sweat from working at the cement factory.

I loved taking baths with my grandfather, who would use his big, thick fingers to squirt bathwater at my face like a water gun, or fill a towel with air, sink it in the tub, and make bubbles come out from under my bottom while saying,
You farted!
Thinking about it now, my grandfather had the wisdom to never truly waste water.

My grandfather would scoop just one bucket of water from the tub, and with that small amount of water, he would lather soap on a towel and wash my body.

He would wash my hair with that same water, and then use a second bucket of water to rinse my body and hair.
Finally, he would scoop a third bucket of water, carefully rinse the towel, wring it out tightly, and wipe my body dry.

The bath would be finished using only three buckets of water from the tub.
The next day, the leftover water would be used for laundry, and

in the summer, it would become a pool of cool leftover water for my sisters and me to play in.

My grandmother had wisdom, too.
She wouldn't throw away a tissue after one use. She would carefully fold the used part and often put it in the pocket of her apron. Then, when she needed it next, she would take it out and use the remaining clean part.

As a child, I watched this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I wondered why my grandparents never wasted water or paper like that.
There is a story from the old days that I heard from my grandfather.

He said that when he was a child, water was very precious because it had to be drawn from a well.

After a meal, they wouldn't wash their rice bowls every time; instead,

they would pour tea into them, wipe the rice grains off the bowl with a piece of pickled radish while drinking the tea, and finally wipe them with a cloth,
turn them upside down, and use them again for the next meal.
From the perspective of our lives today, this might sound a bit unhygienic and would surprise those who are fastidious. But I think that within it lay the wisdom of coexisting with nature, along with the importance of cherishing water.

Life today is so convenient that we end up using too much detergent, water, and other things. It has become normal. It has become a matter of course.

I don't think what we can do for the future is all difficult; after all, these were things that people living in my grandparents' era did as a matter of course.

Turning off the faucet a little sooner. Using things that can still be used with care until the very end.

I believe that these small, accumulated actions will lead to protecting our future lives and the Earth.

#WhatICanDoForTheFuture