That's Just the Way It Is… Or Is It?: Marcela Flores’s episode

by Sandy Glanfield

I can just imagine little Marcela Flores sitting in the back of the family car in Monterrey, Mexico, watching children her own age selling chewing gum between the cars, some without shoes. Why did she have shoes when they didn't? Why were they working when she wasn't? I can almost hear the little cogs turning as she tries to make sense of what she's seeing, quietly forming her own beliefs in defiance of a world that seems to have accepted things as they are.

“Así es.” That's just the way it is. The answer she so often heard from the grown-ups.

How many times have we heard those words ourselves? And how often have we nodded along? It's a wonderfully convenient answer, isn't it? A neat little full stop to a conversation that might otherwise make us uncomfortable. There isn't enough money. It's too complicated. That's how the system works.

I wonder how many possibilities we've closed off simply by accepting that things cannot be different.

One of the things I loved about my conversation with Marcela was her refusal to accept that caring for people and caring for nature must be competing priorities. We've become rather good at presenting the world as a series of choices. Economic growth or environmental protection. Jobs or conservation. Feeding people or saving forests.

But Marcela asks us to imagine something different. What if, instead of either, or, we began thinking and, and?

Through her work with Tierrasphere, she's putting that thinking into practice, working with communities in Mexico to create livelihoods from traditional forest foods while protecting the trees that provide them. She's drawing on generations of knowledge, including the beautiful idea of sembrando agua, or planting water. Forests are sponges, filters and taps, holding and protecting the water on which so much life depends.

What I find particularly hopeful is that this isn't about inventing extraordinary new technology. It's about recognising relationships that already exist, listening to people who understand them, and imagining new possibilities.

At Reboot, we've always talked about the Golden Rule, treating others and the planet as we'd wish to be treated, as a compass for life. Listening to Marcela, I wondered whether she'd found that compass long before she had the words for it. Sitting in the back of that car, she couldn't understand why the opportunities and security she enjoyed shouldn't be available to the children outside too. Or why the natural world she loved couldn't be protected while people built better lives. She wanted others, and the planet, to have the same chance to thrive that she had.

Perhaps it starts with believing that the opportunities and care we wish for ourselves should be possible for others, and for the natural world too.

Because “Así es” might explain how things are today, but it doesn't have to decide what tomorrow looks like.