Seven Generations

I have always found it amazing that ash from a volcanic eruption can travel all the way around the world. It is easy to forget how connected everything is, that ash, or water, or even emotions from one part of the world can travel the entire globe. Although we live in an ever-expanding world of internet and media connection, often our everyday actions get isolated in our thoughts as being just of our life.
I have struggled with this so many times over the years, how to remember and check in with my daily actions and their total impact on the world. If someone is sick on the other side of the world, I can't help but know it must affect me, or perhaps I am affecting it.

If ash can travel, and now food travels, and insects travel, and water travels, then what about chemicals, pesticides, EMF waves, viruses, bacteria, parasites?  When I go to the store and buy food did that food cause destruction somewhere else?  
And thinking forward, could seven generations eat and live the way I am if what I am doing today is causing harm somewhere else?  Thinking about GMO crops for example, when they are planted, and sprayed it kills the entire ecosystem, the birds, insects, soil organisms, water creatures, amphibians, reptiles and even people.  Can this go on for seven more generations?  Will my children's children be able to thrive if this method of agriculture stays the norm?

Put this in contrast to organic farming, nurturing the soil, encouraging insects, and birds and cohabitating life. With the goal and intention of the entire ecosystem growing stronger with every crop. Furthermore, ideally taking only what is needed, planting to replace what has been taken and relying more and more on perennial food sources.  Seven, even one hundred generations can thrive in this system.

How does this affect health? Looking at the past 50 years alone, rates of all chronic diseases have risen and continue to rise, some will pass this off as larger population, and therefore larger disease rates.  But looking at the changes to our life over the past 50 years, food has become a large commercial operation focused on controlled growing, water has become contaminated with very little advance in removing industrial waste and residue of pharmaceutical drugs, and we have become a sit-down society.  Health has been affected on every level.  Our bodies have no idea how to process what has become of our food, our water, our life making us perfect hosts for degeneration and decay.

And so, I return to the question, can seven generations live as I live?  I think of this every day, and will every day of the new year, and if I cannot answer yes, I must make a different choice, which I will do with joy because maybe one change I make will allow space for one other life to thrive, and consequently the seven generations that extend from that life.  One step at a time, one choice at a time, we can all do this, every day.  Maybe the steps will be little, barely noticeable to you, but imagine a planet of people taking a step of a millimeter at a time, every day, all year and just how far we can travel together.