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Sustainability
We are at odds with our home. We live in disharmony with Planet Earth. Rather than rehashing doomsday statistics, the pollution, ozone, and animal extinction rates, let’s see how simple mindset shifts can empower us to take positive action.
This post is about hope.
The first step is always the hardest. It is believing in new possibilities where before there were none. It is letting go of the overwhelm and powerlessness you may feel as a single human being on a vast planet in need of help.
The first part is accepting that no, you can’t do it all, but that also, your actions matter. Your way of living, of being, of thinking, touches everyone that you come into contact with and spreads. Sustainable change is gradual change, and as you know, this is a post about sustainability.
I invite you to make a difference with me. These changes will not be sudden or overwhelming, but to the contrary, are gradual, and might even be fun.
Imagine
All innovations live first in the imagination. Once we believe in the new exciting possibility of global sustainable living for all, we now have the fun part of filling in the “How.”
Before we can imagine a sustainable planet, first let’s imagine a sustainable home. How would such a home interact with it’s environment? How would it be powered, heated, and eliminate waste? How would its residents get food?
Then let’s expand from that to a sustainable neighborhood. A sustainable town. What would such a town, made up of sustainable homes, look like?
Now with a sustainable town, let’s expand to a sustainable country. What would visiting a sustainable country be like? How would its citizens live? How would you have to adapt to their ways of living?
Suddenly, with the aid of imagination, tackling these challenges before us transitions from an overwhelming to an exciting endeavour. It becomes a catalyst for bringing together local communities. It awakens the pioneer, the problem solver, within all of us.
Doing the above exercise gave me the three following mindset shifts.
1. Trash Doesn’t Exist
We push our pollution out of sight. Ship it off to other countries, dump it in the ocean, or bury it underground. Out of sight, out of mind.
Similarly, what do so many of us do with our emotional problems? Don’t we also try to bury our negative emotions deep within us, with the hope that we’ll never have to deal with them? Out of sight, out of mind…
But now the pollution is on our shores, in our food, in our lungs. There is no hiding from yourself. What within you are you refusing to acknowledge?
Just as we can’t digest our negative emotions, so too the planet struggles to digest our hidden trash.
Just as we are backlogged with unresolved issues, so too is the planet.
Trash is a foreign concept to Earth. Trash, as a purely human invention, are objects that are permanent but no longer usable. To nature, there is no such thing as trash, as waste, as permanence. Everything is recycled. Everything is used again and again into eternity. Everything is made a new into something else. Nothing is permanent, and change is the only constant. Death and rebirth is the cycle that keeps on spinning.
To regain harmony with the planet, we literally need to “throw away” the concept of trash. ;-)
2. Accept Impermanence
We are in denial about the impermanence of physical life. We bury our loved ones in thick, impenetrable, cushion-lined boxes. We fear decomposition. We fear the cyclical nature of life that is death and rebirth, and so do our best to build permanent structures, hell, even permanent one-use disposable plastic cups, so we never have to face our mortality. This fear becomes one of the many things we bury inside and try not to think about.
When an animal dies, it goes back to the Earth. It becomes the food for the decomposers in the soil, which in turn, gives nutrients to nearby plants. Animals eat those plants. Animals eat those animals. In whatever fashion, whenever they die, they go back to the soil, and the cycle continues onward. Nothing is wasted. All life is constantly changing into different forms of life. Nature is the ultimate recycler.
To be alive is to evolve. Resisting change, resisting growth, pushing down your negative emotions, which are your catalysts for change, halts your growth. Doing this causes you to be out of tune with the symphony of life.
Letting your emotions flow, learning from them, changing with them, is how you harmonize with yourself, with others, and with the planet.
3. Conquering
If we are to regain harmony with the planet, we must let go of the antiquated “conquer the elements” mindset. We not only live on Earth, we are Earth. We are the elements. The only thing we are conquering is ourselves.
You might also find it useful to personify the planet as Mother Earth, or Gaia. It’s easier to violate an inanimate rock than it is to violate your own mother. I admire the cultures that have managed to live in harmony with their environment because of their reverence for nature. The Native Americans, the Aboriginals of Australia, and countless other indigenous cultures that lived for thousands of years in harmony with their homelands. Meanwhile, modern society has only existed for a couple hundred years, and we’re already in trouble. I find it amusing that we look down on ancient indigeous societies as “primative,” when in fact, we could stand to learn a lot from them.
We must transmute our negative emotions. We must heal our traumas. This is the process of exaltation, of integration, of recycling the pain that lies in the wastelands of our souls.
The beautiful thing is that once we see living in harmony with nature as a possibility, life takes on magical qualities. You see the consciousness in all life. You see how we are all connected.
Transmutation was always an act of magic. Couldn’t we all use a little magic in our lives?
As above, so below
As within, so without
***
In the future I will post more about sustainability as I work towards my long-term goal of growing my own food and building a homestead. But for now, I leave you with these links and a photo from my garden.
I’m convinced. This is no sunflower, but a beanstalk!
