wetlands
a publication of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
Vol 9 No 3

otters: water puppies of the reserve

Hillgrove secondary school adopts the reserve

singapore's first wetland reserve:
what does this mean?

reintroduction of
native mangrove flora

some interesting notes on
the sunbirds

volunteer training at mawai eco camp

Commonwealth secondary school student volunteers

home on high
  
home on high
by joseph lai
conservation officer

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change." Richard Bach, in Illusions, 1977 (author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull)

Have you ever asked yourself these questions? I personally think about them a lot, and I am sure many of you do too. It is only natural. I am happy with the answers I have got through the years though they may be incomplete or illusive at best. What is important is that I never stop asking these questions. They make my life a meaningful journey. Each partially answered question is like a candle lighting the way. When one is exhausted, another is lit and another question asked. Though the answers are illusive, the questions are illuminating.

Today, I asked myself yet again -- Where is home? This time, my question was spurred on by the dedication in which the jolly bunch of fifty-odd volunteers has for this place they obviously call home. Come rain or shine, they will be here for us in Sungei Buloh - to guide visitors or to help facilitate events within the reserves. What stands out most, like a feather in the cap, is their happiness. Surely that is the mark of a home - for home is where the heart is. And the heart is where terms of endearment and happiness prevail. Why then Sungei Buloh? If not here, where?

I sincerely believe that they will be excellent volunteers wherever they chose to be. Their motivation stems from a great love for Nature and the world is their oyster as such. I liken their perception of a home as that of the migratory birds, and their vision, high amongst the clouds -- that of a world -- a better world, not just a better Sungei Buloh.

Perhaps at this moment in time, my question has brought home to me a new insight that we cannot just dream dreams of a better world, without first making a concrete choice and commitment to serve a small dot on the global map. In reverse, nature volunteers cannot hope to do volunteer works right without first having a vision of a better world from a Home on high.

And perhaps, for want of a better word, our true home is the realm of our being, where we can be up there yet down here. That home, though it is not a place or space in truth, is where we want to be -- to live to the fullest of our joy just like the indomitable and free-spirited Jonathon Livingston Seagull who said, 'I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.'

For the joy of flying, and questioning, I think I know a little better now. Don't you?
   
© Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve