by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

A lot of people are addressing a new “green” issue - the “why bother?” question that looms over our daily lives as we try to balance the status quo with needed changes, work with play, fear with faith. We don’t have much time. Change has to happen quickly or - well, big changes will be upon us quickly. Is Change something we learn to do or something that just happens? I say a lot of both.

Life is like a big jigsaw puzzle. We’ve dumped the pieces out “on the table” and at first, it feels overwhelming, even impossible to begin to put things in order. So we spend some time looking at and working with a few pieces and we’ve even fit a few small ones into place. But those few pieces aren’t enough - we have to keep going back to the pile. We are seeing a glimpse of something that is beautiful, even when there’s also something daunting about looking at all that is left in that pile. The work itself keeps us focused on the beauty - and we keep coming back for more. Some days we throw up our hands and walk out the door, but, we know we’ll be back.

We need to approach our efforts towards a more sustainable life just like this puzzle - knowing that we are working on something bigger and that the process itself is all we have. You know, something like “be here now”. It all starts by looking at and working on a few small pieces. Small, continuous work and actions matter because they lead to bigger actions, new ideas and perspective. More importantly, perhaps, is that they give us a feeling of participating in change - of living, if just slightly, outside ourselves. When this happens, we bring our innate qualities to the surface - of compassion, truth and wisdom - in other words, who we are, what we see and what we know. We are able to tap into our intuition, finding a balance between what we see outwardly and what we see outwardly - all tools to get the real work done.

Remember what we are capable of - and these wise words: “If we did all the things we were capable of doing, We would literally astound ourselves.”

— Thomas Alva Edison

Tags: green

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Green Misc., Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.