“So, have you booked your flight yet?”
I love this question. Bathing in my own smugness, I shake my head. “No, I’ll be taking the train.”
And there it is. The wide-open eyes, understanding that I am superior. I smile, feeling like a benevolent queen. I do not judge them.
As I’m taking the train for my exchange year, I have not spent a single second contemplating the environmental consequences of my travels. Is the university not celebrating my decision by granting me the extra money for green travel? Green as the nature I’ll see while dreamily staring through the foggy, unwashed train windows. Green as the trees who had to fall to make way for me. Green as the grass would be, if not burnt by heatwaves as early as June. What is green travel in the end? Is it not an oxymoron? A green existence, I think, must be impossible to achieve. When I booked my train ticket, I felt good about myself. But now I think of the grass which caught fire last summer when the sparks of a passing train flew into the dried-out meadow. I think of the never ending construction work at the main station which will improve everything but the environmental toll of mass human transportation. Then I look up at the sky and spot an airplane. So high up, but I am still able to recognise the company. Have been fed their name, their brand, their colour through funny TikToks and posters at the train station inviting me to a much quicker and more comfortable mode of transportation.
In reality, I chose the train because I am afraid of flying. It was never about the environment, my consciousness was always only second to my own comfort. And now I wonder, would I have chosen the train if I weren’t so deathly afraid of flying? I want to say yes, because even to myself I love to lie. All to keep up this idea of me caring. I’m a fraud, and it is only by chance that I ended up here, damning the world a little less by following the path which holds the least resistance for myself. And I’m ashamed, wondering if I’m only hiding behind pretend care for the environment. But no, I do care, I love the world, I march down the street shouting angry little rhymes, separate my trash, don’t own a car, see every being as my equal, care for the world, take the train, but have I moved out of my comfort zone yet? Have I truly ever done more than the minimum? Has the shrinking number on my bank account saved me from being nature’s biggest enemy? It is good that I am on this train and not the flight up there, I decide. But in the end, it shouldn’t only be where I end up, which is important, but the consciousness with which I choose to live this borrowed life.
