Why I Chose to Go Green
Dear reader,
Joanna Riquett –founder of Hayo– here. This is a note to let you know why it’s been quite a while since we last activated Hayo and especially why I have chosen to give this magazine a different direction.
The truth is that almost 3 years ago, I started questioning my life path and my purpose. I started feeling that I wasn’t in the place where I wanted to be, both physically and mentally. I wasn’t connecting to what I was doing. I loved traveling, discovering new places, and then relating them to you, but inside of me, something felt empty.
After a tough personal journey inwards, I understood that this meant that I was living in autopilot. I wasn’t sure what I wanted or where I could start looking, but I knew there had to be something more for me. All of that brought me to Mexico two years ago, I came trying to find the answers to the questions I had. Looking back, I can see that I was asking the wrong questions, but luckily a land so magical and powerful like Mexico can put you in the right direction and show you the way.
In this journey, I found myself learning about a pressing issue that up to that point I had been ignoring. I started learning and educating myself about climate change and especially about the solutions around it. I started watching documentaries, films, interviews, reading news, books, following activists, and all the things you do when you’re curious. I realized that we are so driven by monetary gratification, that we take anything that “makes our lives easier” and forget to question where it came from.
We’re so busy building our “financial freedom” that we forget the things that really matter. We do that with our food, with our clothing, with religion, with the way we relate to each other, and anything and everything that surrounds us. We don’t question anything. We just accept that supermarkets sell peeled oranges in plastic containers because it facilitates our consumption. We accept that our States make all important decisions about the future of our Planet according to monetary convenience. We accept the notion that eating meat three times a day is the right way of eating at the expense of entire forests burning down to make room for cattle. We accept that somehow there will always be resources for everyone so let’s have 3, 4, 7 children. And we continuously spin the wheel of absurdity because it’s easier to do that than to question how we do things.
I’d like to ask you: What do you really believe in? it’s time for us to create a new reality; one that is in balance and harmony with mother earth, one that respects the lives of ALL living species, one that is driven by fairness and not the indiscriminate exploitation of resources, one that values integrity over race, one in which reciprocity (human-planet / human-human) is at the core of what we do.
For two years I questioned my role in all of this. What could I do if I was just a regular citizen? And what purpose does a magazine serve in a world that needs our working hands to help it? It turns out, there is a lot we can do as consumers. We hold so much power in our hands that we can, together, truly make a difference. Being an activist today is not [only] about protesting the streets, it’s about choosing to do things differently. Together we got here and only together we can make it better.
Hayo is now being reborn as a magazine that cares for slow travel, reciprocity, sustainability, and eco-friendly choices. I, at the front of this publication, will share with you my findings, my learnings, and my experiences in discovering a new way of traveling because there’s no escaping on this. Our planet, the only home we’ve known, needs us urgently and changes can only happen gradually, they take time and they are slow. Our clock is ticking, so let’s get to work.
With love,
Joanna Riquett
