STORY BYThe Moken people knew what to do when the tsunami came. These gypsies of the Andaman Sea have lived for hundreds of years on the coastal islands off Thailand and Burma.
When the water rapidly receded and one small wave came, they knew the Laboon was coming next. According to the legend of the Moken, the Laboon is “the wave that eats people.” Before it comes, the sea recedes. Then the waters flood the earth, destroy it, and make it clean again.
The Moken on land fled for higher ground, along with animals, before the Laboon struck. Those Moken in their fishing boats made for deeper water and were spared. Their story saved them. Their story also saved the tourists who ran with them.
Equally remarkable are the pieces left out of their legends: the Moken have no word in their language for “when.” Dr. Jacques Ivanoff, a French anthropologist, is the world’s foremost authority on the Moken, having lived with them for more than 20 years. “Time is not the same concept as we have,” he explains. They live so fully in the present that they don’t know how old they are. Without the word “when,” there is no reference to past or future time.
By Kay Ryan
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
(from The Niagra River,
Grove Press, New York)
Circumstances dictate action. Trying to imagine how one would live in our time-driven world without saying ”when” is like trying to imagine how wide our galaxy is in light years. We can’t wrap our minds around it.
Nor do the Moken have a word for “want.” Says Ivanoff, “You give or you take. You don’t ‘want.’” Our ego-controlled society is based on “I want.” Mega-malls and metropolises are built on “I want. ”We Westerners beat to the rhythm of “want.” But the Moken “want” very little. Being nomadic, things weigh them down. They take what they need, give what they have, and live in the now.
Hurricane Katrina became our new legend, our laboon. The world watched in horror as the land and people were devoured by unimaginable winds and a Laboon that ate everything in its path. So when Hurricane Rita threatened to roar up the Port of Houston, two million people, with newly-seared images of devastation fled for higher ground, literally and metaphorically, heeding warnings of those whose job it was to interpret the signs of the Laboon.
During the hurricanes, there emerged a remarkable spirit mirroring this in-the-moment, give-and-take state of being. Thousands of acts of heroics and compassion happened; “when” and “want” went out the window, replaced simply with “do.” The Dalai Lama, who was in Houston when Hurricane Rita threatened to make a direct hit, writes in his book, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life, “The closer we are to a person, the more unbearable we find that person’s suffering. The closeness I speak of is not a physical proximity, nor need it be an emotional one. It is a feeling of responsibility, of concern for a person.”
Life’s laboons also give us an opportunity to examine what matters to us most.
One Houstonian, unboarding after Hurricane Rita veered away, said, “Something like this makes me reevaluate what I have in my house. Like my mother’s clothes. My mother died in 1976.”
With what did we choose to flee? Family, pets, jewelry? Photographs, documents, comfort food? Disaster forces us into last-minute, life-saving choices, like putting our children on an evacuation bus or getting on a plane not knowing where it will land. What we may forget is that every moment of our lives we are making choices of what to cling to and what to let go of, and those choices influence not only our happiness but our health.
All the major religions advise us to think carefully about what we choose to cling to. The tsunami, the hurricanes, the mudslides in Guatemala, the earthquake in Pakistan and India jar us to realize how easily and instantly we can lose all that we hold dear. The Psalmist prayed, “Lord remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered, and that my life is fleeing away.” (39:4) We can feel our mortality acutely when we see a truck careening into our lane or cling to a tree as waters roil around us. We soon forget, after the truck misses us or the waters have receded. How, then, do we keep the ego from reestablishing its ferocious grip?
Gratitude is one of the best ways to commit “egocide.” The research on the physical benefits of appreciation and gratitude are voluminous. Those feelings decrease stress, improve the immune system, calm the autonomic nervous system, and have myriad positive outcomes for us physically as well as psychologically. Their healing benefits are free and available to us at any time. We just have to train ourselves to see ourselves as blessed, without the powerful reminders imposed by crises. Things will always go wrong, but things also go right. It’s a matter of remembering the legends, even when the Laboon is past.
UPDATED: 11-30-2005
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©2000-2006 Office of Institutional Advancement, UT-Houston
Dr. Blair Justice is professor emeritus of psychology at UT School of Public Health and the author of several books. His wife, Dr. Rita Justice is a psychologist in private practice in Houston.
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Food Irradiation
and Safety
On August 22, 2008, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a final rule that allows the use of irradiation to make fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach safer and last longer without spoiling.
Irradiating fresh iceberg lettuce and spinach will help protect consumers from disease-causing bacteria such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli). Illnesses from these bacteria range from uncomfortable symptoms to life-threatening health problems.
The foods affected by the final rule are
Irradiation (also sometimes termed "ionizing radiation") is a process of treating products with a measured dose of radiation. Food irradiation is not new. FDA has conducted irradiation safety evaluations for more than 40 years and has determined the process to be safe for use on a variety of foods.
After studying the safety of irradiating fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach, FDA has determined that these greens, when irradiated under the conditions specified in the final rule, retain their nutrient value and are safe to eat.
FDA considers irradiation a complement to, not a replacement for, proper food-handling by producers, processors, and consumers. Irradiation is just another tool to reduce the levels of disease-causing microorganisms on fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh pinach.
Irradiation does not take the place of washing. FDA continues to recommend that consumers wash fresh and bagged produce before eating unless the packaging specifically states that the product has been pre-washed.
For more information, go to: http://www.fda.gov)
