A noteworthy YouTube documentary

Recently, I saw the short YouTube documentary “The Living Bridges of Meghalaya,” which featured an uncle teaching his young niece how to cultivate a living bridge.

These bridges in the northern India state of Meghalaya are called jing kieng jri or living root bridges. They are made by planting saplings on either side of deep gorges found in this region and — over the course of decades — coaxing the flexible roots to connect in midair and fuse until the whole structure can support pedestrian traffic. The process takes a lifetime or more. A gift from one generation to another.

Watching that documentary reminded me how even our sense of time is created by our culture, and that ours has a time horizon that’s already short and seems to be shortening. Our clothing, tools, furniture and even our houses are not designed to last as long as similar objects generations ago. Businesses and institutions count success or failure by a year or even quarter. Politicians’ electoral cycles are only a few years long. Many of us make decisions about our health, our debt and our lives as if the future is disconnected from the present.

What would it be like if we took a longer view? What if a company was judged by its earnings over a decade? What if a leader was more concerned by the judgement of history rather than the next poll result? What would we plant — literally or metaphorically — if we were more invested in the next generation than the next year?

Submitted by Florence Edwards-Miller

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