little white truths

Below I'm going to cut/paste something I posted on my personal Facebook page recently and expand on it, so if you've already read that then you can skip that portion of this post - but I felt it was important to bring the discussion over here.

First, I want to paint a brief picture so you know why I've found myself reflecting on this stuff recently:

I've spent the last two weeks removing crap from the house so we have room for more crap that we bought or received over Christmas, and the sheer ridiculousness of donating a bunch of stuff we don't need to make room for more stuff we don't need has been playing on my mind.

Also, there's been so much in the news during 2017 about natural disasters, the war on terror and terrorism itself, racism, useless drama that people create in the online community, haters - even the recent tragedies in Melbourne's CBD when cars mowed down pedestrians on two separate occasions. Twice in one year.

Unfortunately there's not a hell of a lot I can actively do about this stuff in my daily life, particularly when the kids are so young and take up so much time and energy. The best I can do, for the most part, is not add fuel to the fire.

But for every moment that I feel helpless about these things, for every time I ask myself what I can do in service of the greater good, there is a place I can focus my energies. Maybe it's time we all did that.

Here's my Facebook post:

I have something to say.

We’re watching Gunpowder (yes, for Jon Snow), and Norman and I both commented on how bloody those Catholic/Protestant wars were.

Hardly front page news, but it got me thinking about the things humans have done to each other (and other life forms) in the name of belief.

We’ve killed each other over land, religion, race, colour... You name it. But you know what? As awful as that is, at least it’s been done in the name of belief.

Within 50 years our children and grandchildren will be going to war over resources. They will be fighting for the last drop of water, the last patch of fertile land from which to grow food, the remaining parts of the planet to live on that are not underwater. Unless something real and massive changes, that’s the reality.

And once that war is over, if there be any of us remaining, do you know what they’ll call us? The generation who caused war through nothing but carelessness. Laziness.

The ‘yeah my dishwasher has a four star rating but I still flush my toilet with clean water and empty half-finished glasses of water down the sink, rather than putting them on the garden’ generation.

The ‘yeah I voted Green but I still forget to close packets properly so my crackers grow stale and I’m always throwing shit out from the fridge and freezer because it’s been there too long’ generation.

The ‘hey I recycle but I keep buying all this stuff for myself and others that no one needs, so I’m creating unnecessary packaging to be made and recycled’ generation.

The ‘I let cold water run down the plug hole until it gets warm enough, rather than putting a bucket down to catch it or filling the kettle with it’ generation.

We’re all guilty of it, myself included. But when my kids are going into battle for resources and watching their own kids do the same, I want to be able to tell them that I did everything I could.

Perhaps I’m not the only one.

Funnily enough I’m going to end this rant/sermon with the words of F Scott Fitzgerald:

‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into...their vast carelessness...and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’

Roger out.

What I did not say above (because my rant was FAR too long already ; )) is that the reference to Jon Snow was deliberate. 

Surely the White Walkers in Thrones are a nod to the environment. Winter is coming. That's how I take it, anyway. We need to forget our squabbling and fight that battle first. I can't do anything about the battles overseas or the recent tragedies in our own CBD, but I can do stuff in my own household. 

We all can.

#thisisapyramidscheme

Now people have mentioned in the comments on my post that we need a change in corporate behaviour and an adjustment in society's lifestyle expectations to effect real change. The individual isn't enough. Yes, they're right - absolutely. This is a critical mass situation. All hands must be on deck.

But the thing is, there's a risk in saying 'oh it's not my responsibility - the bigger groups hold more power and have more impact than I do'. 

Yes, all that's required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. 

You knew that was coming ; )

The individual holds more power than they realise. Just ask Martin Luther King. I really believe that. Or perhaps I have to believe it, because when I scroll through my Facebook news feed and see images such as the one I saw last night - a young Syrian father holding his dead twin toddlers after a chemical attack - I feel so helpless that I wonder why on earth I brought my own kids into this world.

I can't fix the things we're doing to each other overseas, but I can do more about what's happening on my own small patch of earth. And if one person in every household did that, suddenly we might start getting somewhere in the war against environmental destruction at least. 

There's only one of me, but my household is focused on waste management because I've converted my husband, and we're teaching our kids to think about their environmental footprint. Suddenly one has become four. 

Surely that's making some difference, year after year, and as my kids grow older and take what they have learned, applying it in their outside worlds.

And if you still don't believe that we as individuals hold much power, well, just think of this:

You've heard the saying 'watch the pennies and the pounds look after themselves'. Fact. I've learned that the hard way. The daily changes we make add up unbelievably over the course of a year. If you stop spending on random, small things, all of a sudden you've made a huge saving by year's end. I used to buy at least two coffees every day. That's $8 AUD per day. Over the course of a year, I've saved almost $3,000 AUD on coffee alone. Wow. That's a holiday. Or better still, I could put that money towards having a grey water system installed in my own home.

The same applies to diet. If you eat well ninety per cent of the time, then the pounds (pun intended) look after themselves. Having lost a bundle of weight and kept that off for fifteen years now, I've learned that the hard way too. My kids have good diets now because I do. Pay it forward. It's basic maths.

If non tangible (yet) environmental benefits aren't enough for you, then let's talk cash.

Our utility bills have always been comparatively low because my husband joined my environmental/waste-focused mindset when he moved in all those years ago. Now maybe he did that to stop my nagging, but the thing is, he saw the change in our water bill especially when he started thinking about it more - so he kept thinking about it. The financial benefits are so tangible that they cannot be ignored.

Then we had children, and my environment-focus became even stronger because I was thinking about the future of the living, breathing loved ones before me. Their lives are my responsibility. I chose to have them, to bring them into this world. That was another $50 off our water bill every quarter. I kid you not. There's a lot you can do with rainwater, if you think about it. There's a lot you can do with the cold-before-it's-hot water, if you bother to do so.

But I can do better. We all can. I buy too much stuff, obviously. I have a beauty blog: we all know I have more of this kind of stuff than anyone needs. 

I have however made my peace with what I do buy for two reasons: first, everything gets used because I'm a panner and my collection also isn't that big, when you compare it to others in the beauty community; and second, this is the only non-essential thing I do buy. I don't buy many clothes (and most of what I do buy is second-hand), I don't spend a lot of money on non-essential food. And I no longer buy 'real' coffee every day: I gave that up because I told myself that I could only have one thing, and beauty won.

I reuse and re-purpose packaging BEFORE recycling it. Most 'can eventually recycle' things aren't dead yet. If you'd like to read a post I did recently on reusing/re-purposing thing for kids, that's here.

But yes, I can do better. I'll work out how and implement more changes on this patch of earth, then I'll report back in case anyone is interested in doing the same.

In sum

I meant what I said above, you know. We can look back on the tragedies of human history and say 'oh wasn't it awful, what Hitler did to the Jews' and 'I can't believe that black slavery ever happened' and 'isn't it shocking what we're doing to Muslims and what the extremists are doing to us?'

Yes. It is terrible. Awful. There are no words to express it, what we have done to each other and other life forms in the name of belief.

But just look at what we're doing to our own environment, every day. Just look at the bad habits we're teaching our children. Because they're nothing more than that: bad habits that we haven't bothered to change, despite what we know.

If there is any future for our species and our planet, they will not look back on us in future times and say we were black, we were white, we were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant...

They will look back on us and say that we wasted our natural resources for no good reason. For nothing other than carelessness and laziness. In past times we didn't know about environmental footprints. We do now. There's no excuse.

So next time you see a smoker or an obese person or a whatever person and have a judgemental thought ('Don't they know any better?'; 'Can't they control themselves?'; 'Who would do that, in this day and age?'; 'Why do they do that to themselves?'), turn the spotlight back on yourself. 

Can't they control themselves? Why do they do that to themselves? Why do we do this to each other, to our children. To the other life forms on this planet who have no say in what we are doing to them. 

Leave things a little better than you found them.

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com