Hello friends!
With Earth Day this weekend, it seems appropriate to celebrate the environment we live in. Start a conversation, and attempt to be a bit more delicate with the world. We don’t exist without it, after all. We know this but sometimes we grow careless and take this precious planet for granted, me included.
The air we breathe, the water we source, the wood, the minerals, the animals — we just keep taking. I feel the shift, I’m sure many of you do. We are becoming more and more aware of the damage we’re doing. Sure, it’s not malicious. Our intention is not to destroy our home, we just forget to be gracious and humble.
I drive a car, my home is not energized from the sun, my appliances and windows need desperate upgrading to be more energy efficient. I too, have many areas to work on, to play a bigger role in caring for my little slice of heaven, my piece of the pie as they say. Our arrogance as the leaders of the pack on this glorious rock has done us a disservice and we know it. We are starting to give back in every way we can.
It all made me start thinking about my personal environment: the dialogue in my head, my home itself, the way I keep it. Is it cluttered, untidy? Is it inviting and warm? This space is our personal environment and it’s just as important to care for it as the global village we are part of.
What we create in our home life we take with us into this village, to others as we walk past each other in the store, picking out produced harvested by another human we will never meet unless we buy local. We don’t really think about it. That awareness is easy to lose track of in our busy lives.
I lived on farms throughout my childhood, some of them with no running water or electricity (have I mentioned I’m 50 now!) After more than 30 years living with the luxuries of power and plumbing, I still find myself saying out loud how much I cherish running water. Because of those days as a kid hauling water from a well, catching rain, even melting snow to drink after boiling, I am so wowed by it on a regular basis.
I’d take running water over electricity any day, and send this blog to the masses via carrier pigeon. I have raised and slaughtered livestock, but found my most fruitful way of giving back to the planet is to follow a plant-based diet, and I have for more than half my adult life.
I make an effort every day to honour my environment, the one within reach of me and the one way beyond that I can’t see. I walk outside, gravity keeps me here. I tilt my face to the sky, the sun, rain, stars, moon and wind all there even though I don’t see them, just patiently waiting their turn to play with us or completely destroy us with Mother Nature’s fury.
We know we need to do better and we can. If we all just do a little bit of conscious living in our own space and take that out into our community, the ripple effect can create that change we need more than we might be willing to admit. It’s your world, your life. It’s waiting, live it now.
