Rose waiting for her Imaginary Squirrel.
I hear a lot of talk – and am doing a lot of talking – about sustainability, buying local, thinking small, living small, downsizing. If you read much history, the talk is familiar and often occurs during “depressions,” “recessions,” “downturns,” when people are shocked, frightened or forced into examining their lives. When the banks recover, these ideas often recede. Perhaps not this time.
I think of the writer and farmer Wendell Berry: “As thousands of small farms and local businesses of all kinds falter and fail under the effect of adverse economic policies, the economist sits in the calm of professional tenure and government subsidy, commenting and explaining for the illumination of the press and the general public. If those who fail happen to be fellow humans, neighbors, children of God, and citizens of the republic, all that is outside the purview of the economist.” (from “What Are People For?”).
So many of us are are ready to be sustainable, buy local, love Mother Earth, yet we find that many, if not most of the places we could do this are gone. Wal-Mart took care of this by seeking to open stores every 30 miles all across America. And nobody stopped them. Few of us can exist entirely on local and organic foods, and few can afford it. For me, sustainability is not only about where I shop or how I buy things – what would be the economist’s idea. For me A Sustainable Life is internal. It is about not making choices that come out of fear, anger or judgement. I am not seeking a sustainable life to forestall the increasingly-invoked horrors of the Dystopian World – starvation, economic collapse, environmental ruin, panic, mayhem and barbarism.
I seek a sustainable life because it is a good life. It is not something, for me, that I have to do, but something I wish to do. That is a meaningful life. I believe movements born out of anger and fear are doomed to fail because they are not built on anything lasting or uplifting. I am learning not to live outside of myself, not to live in the other world of politics, health care, the media. To not live in the world in which other people are telling me life is not worth living. That is not, to me, a Sustainable Life. For me, a meaningful life is internal. So I am thinking a lot about a simpler life, a less wasteful life, a life that seeks to support the individual, the creative spark, compassion, generosity of spirit, spirituality, creativity and independence. A love that seeks to heal the wounds we have inflicted on Mother Earth, that includes animals and the natural world. I am working to leave fear and anger and judgement behind. This is, to me, a Sustainable Life. A life I wish to live.