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ecological footprint
October 2007 
5...4...3...2...
christiana
Brian and I flew to San Francisco yesterday for an awesome and inspiring lunch meeting with Aaron, Huy and Jeff Klein from FLOW.
On our much delayed flight home we were gazing out the window as our plane circled Los Angeles.
The city I am always leaving, and always coming back to.
This view of Los Angeles always brings heaviness to my chest. My breath becomes dense and I find myself praying for salvation in a way I haven’t believed in since Sunday school.
What I always imagine is that every light is a life, a body, a person.
I see myself below as just one light.
I consider my genuine efforts to tread lightly on the earth.
I think of how much food I throw away, how much plastic and paper (of coarse I recycle) I consume daily with all the packaging, and magazines etc.How much STUFF I have and how many resources it took to manufacture and deliver all my possessions. I imagine what an Eco-drain I am converting virgin resources into landfill mass at an unsustainable rate. And then I look down at the lights and imagine me multiplied by millions.
“Things are getting worse…”
Brian put his hand on my arm and stirred the silence. He said “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Brian was sitting right next to me, sharing the same view but seeing the world from a different perspective.
I jump into his perspective for a moment- Look at what man can create! We can conduct, channel and concentrate energy, we can organize our environment and build these complex webs that are cities and somehow have a sense of order. That really is AMAZING! That there are millions of people, living stacked together, navigating massive machines at 60mph and we do not have complete chaos.
Everything is natural. Everything beneath us extracted, collected from the earth, designed, transformed and sculpted by human minds, human hands, and human sweat.
And we use what percent of our potential brain capacity? Things are changing, people are wising up, and people will demand businesses that help design and charge whole-heartedly towards a sustainable future.
“Things are getting better…”
How many times will I look out this window and see the world differently?
How many perspectives can I possibly hold on the same phenomenon, how many contradictions, how much confusion?
How will I cultivate enough wisdom, compassion, and courage to communicate to all those tiny lights beneath me?
Will they listen? And when they do--- what will I say?
How can I trust in Divine Perfection, that I feel at work, at play in every moment?
“Things are already perfect”
Access: Public
Also a good time to ask : What’s Good, What’s Bad, Who Knows? ;)
Whatever happens in this Long Emergency - whether we are heading towards some heaven type singularity, some hellish type bio terror/gray-goo/holocaust, or prevailing/muddling through it (my thoughts - prevailing, leaning toward the ‘hellish’) - what matters regardless, as you say, is the wisdom, compassion, courage we have as each moment is reborn the only way it could be - with equanimity to accept and some (muditaish) joy to embrace.
This reminds me , time to pick up Radical Simplicity again ( apply some of Brian’s 80/20 insights and tips as appropriate!)- I believe you are familiar with it :)
Allow me to channell Brian for a moment and add this:
The value you add as a consious contributing person on this Earth outweighs the cost of your resource depletion.
For me it is mostly helpful to remember that there is no separation between myself and “The Environment.” This body arose from Earth matter and is a beautiful working member of the web of life. Of course in my life I will consume what it takes for me to sustain my life and enjoy my life. The problem with human consumption is not neccessarily how much we consume- but that we have cut the natural cycle -of taking, consuming and returning refuse to the soil-short. We now live with an over-abundance of “waste.” We Permaculturists like to say: Waste is a verb not a noun. It is a shortened form of WASTED RESOURCES. We have begun to produce things in a way that what is left over that we can not use- we can not put back to work in the natural environment. So- we have landfills, toxic run-off, etc. etc.
But it is also helpful to think of myself as capable of contributing to the world more than consuming and excreting. I was blessed with this human life. I have been blessed with certain resources- (wisdom, skills, finances, aptitude, etc.) and I have this relatively small slice of time to divide oxygen with a few Billion other sentient beings—
What am I going to do with it? How will I help? How will I serve? If I can help educate others by sharing how to live more simply, how to CONNECT with where their food comes from and where it goes, how to re-ENGAGE with awareness in the brilliance of the web of life, If I can help others THINK about the choices they make in their lives and how they affect the whole- Then isn’t it worth the gas it takes to fuel my journey?
My goal is to have healed more than hurt- on this trip to the Blue Planet.
(Plus there are always carbon offsets)
Well channelled. :)
TY…………
I have been pondering perspective and perception alot lately………
Another good example for my in this blog…..
Heidi