Green Renaissance produces gorgeous short films that uplift the personal stories of ordinary people, with the goal of sharing ideas and inspiring change. We feel hugely blessed to feature video-stories that filmmakers Michael and Justine capture with exquisite expertise, and which so beautifully illustrate Grateful Living principles and practices. In this short film we hear from Nirmala Nair.

Learn more about Green Renaissance through our Grateful Changemaker feature.*

Questions for Reflection

  • What feelings/thoughts/questions surface for you in viewing Nirmala’s story?
  • How does Nirmala’s story move you?

We invite you to share your reflections below the video transcript that follows.

Video Transcript

My children always tell me, I’m a… what is the…there’s a word for it… social… misfit! (laughing) 

You see, I am actually quite unusual in my thinking. I don’t want to just settle down to life. I mean it just sounds so boring, I could not have lived a settled down life. And my work, I think, is continuously sharing the ability to question the status quo. Not let people just sit back into that settled down life and then be comfy. No. We’ve got work to do. 

So what are you here for? What are you alive… what are you living for? You are here to do something, even just a tiny little thing, which starts from being able to listen to that little voice inside, to be able to connect with that. If you’re not able to connect with that, how are you going to be able to connect outside. Even if you’ve got wifi and satellite phone and all of that I mean that’s not connection. You are disconnected inside. 

Time has become linear. What do they call it? I have a… I have a deadline. That’s right, that’s the word. I have a deadline. Deadline. OK. It’s a line from one to there, and it’s dead. It’s a dead line. So you are following a dead line. You have a dead line. Do you ever have a living line? (laughs) No – it’s a dead line. So obviously if the whole world is following a dead line, what do you expect? You get dead living. (laughs) 

There are things that are beyond our understanding. There is an enthusiasm to discover life, and how life operates. But we don’t have that. We have already made answers. We have Mr. Google sitting there and giving us answers at the tip of a click. So we don’t really go out and engage. We don’t relate. We don’t discover.

The intelligence inside us is alive, in everybody. It’s there, for each of us to access. It’s there. So to be able to take the risk, to follow one’s heart, and make mistakes and learn from that, that is authenticity.

To allow of you who have contributed, for those of you who have shared our films, for those of you who have written out comments, this journey is just beginning. And we’ve put a Patreon link below our films, so if you would like to continue to support us, we’d love for you to donate below. Thanks so much.

To support Michael and Justine in their film-making journey visit Green Renaissance.


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About the author

Justine and Michael are a creative couple living in South Africa.  Their project, Green Renaissance, works to spread positive stories that reflect the wonder of the world. With the goal of sharing ideas and inspiring change, they produce gorgeous short films that are posted online and available for anyone, anywhere, to watch and share freely.


Through their films, they explore what it means to be human. They touch on topics that can often be difficult for people to discuss – from loss of a loved one to aging and retirement to friendship to love and courage – universal themes that we all deal with at some stage in our lives.


By sharing these stories, Justine and Michael hope to remind us of one simple truth – that we are all human – that inside our hearts and minds, we are all facing similar challenges.  We have so much to learn from each other, and our connections run so much deeper and stronger than we think. Learn more and support their work at greenrenaissance.co.za.