So, I am now three weeks away from having to hand the first essay for my Masters. It relates to the possibilities of global or regional regulation of international transboundary air pollution in Asia and it's quite an interesting topic on the whole. Having a study leave day today, I spent the morning reading about the state of the environment and projections for the future and, consequently, started feeling somewhat despondent.

As a result, this afternoon I decided to go in search of encouragement. Since I now have internet at home, I decided I would see what sort of inspiration I could find there. But where to start? Well, I thought about it and decided that, if anything, surely a Russian proverb or saying could provide some kind of encouragement. Russian authors always seem to have some kind of interesting meditation on life.

So, after contemplating the advantages of being Russian when it comes to finding a literary outlet for one's despondency, I typed "russian proverb" into the search engine, and the first thing I found was "You cannot break through a wall with your forehead". My first thought was that this was somewhat self-evident, but I decided to pursue it further...and I'm still going to have to pursue it becase, while doing so, I came across this quote from Dostoyevsky (conveniently, a Russian)which brought me back to my orginal problem:

"My younger brother asked forgiveness of the birds: it may seem absurd, but it is right nonetheless, for everything, like the ocean, flows and comes into contact with everything else: touch it in one place and it reverberates at the other end of the world".

So, as I read about the damage our industrialised (and industrialising) world does to the natural environment in the knowledge that as an Australian I have either the first or second highest per capita carbon emissions (I can't remember which), I think about how my lifestlye affects everything else in a world of ecological interdependence.

But to ask forgiveness? Well that seems too much...not because I have a theoretical objection to it, but only because it seems to hypocritical to do so when your country continues on as is (as we pretty much do in Australia).

Sometimes I feel like the concept of being an "australian" is a bit redundant...the world's problems just seem too big for national identity to matter. I guess it's a global equity issue in the end.

But otherwise everything else seems to be going well!!