If your career and relationships aren’t shaping up the way you’d like, you may want to ask: “Am I tone deaf?”
Tone deaf, blind to impact BARBARA MOSES Globe & Mail, June 27, 2008 Barbara Moses, Ph.D, is an international speaker, work/life expert, and best-selling author of Dish: Midlife Women Tell the Truth About Work, Relationships, and the Rest of Life and state-of-the-art on-line tool Career Advisor (like having a personal career counselor on your computer). For more: www.bmoses.com
What fresh hell is this?
Famously attributed to Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?” sometimes seems an appropriate response to the daily news. World leaders have walked away from the G8 summit in Japan without meaningful commitments to carbon emission reduction at a time when 2,000 of the world’s leading scientists are begging for action.
Most of the rest of us don’t really understand. We either believe the scientists that are calling for action or we don’t — we don’t have the time or ability to interpret the data that is being used to substantiate the science. But in any logical decision making process, the wise person will ask themselves the ultimate question: can I live with the cost of being wrong on this? In the case of climate change, acting to reduce emissions will ultimately leave us with a more comfortable world whether or not today’s science is proved accurate. Not acting, on that other hand, has the potential to be catastrophic. Logic is clearly on the side of action.
According to polls, public opinion is logical — we overwhelmingly favour action. Yet our leaders fail to act. But the real problem isn’t our politicians — “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” In representative democracy, or at least our aspirational version of that, our politicians act when acting means votes. They do not act when they believe that votes are at risk — their people fervently watch the polls and gaze into lines of data in the hope of predicting what will result in votes in the future.
Our problem is us. When we act to meaningfully change our impact on the planet from negative to positive — or at least neutral — we tell our leaders how we will vote. As long as we collectively live in homes that are larger than we need, choose suburban lifestyles that require miles of travel each day, drive inefficient vehicles and make it dangerous for people who wish to bike to work, we’re communicating a very clear message — we talk the talk, but we don’t care much.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not speaking from the mountaintop. I’ve driven an efficient sub-compact for many years, I live in a small home, I work at home as much as possible and I eat delicious organic food (locally grown when possible) that is delivered to my door by SPUD. I use cleansers made from edible ingredients. But I have a hot shower and a hot bath almost every day — I’m addicted.
We’re all addicted to something — to our gas-guzzling car, our four-bedroom home in suburbia, the steak that required 700 calories of grain to produce 100 calories of meat. And at the heart of every addiction is an insatiable hunger — a legitimate need that is not being satisfied in a healthy manner. In western culture, research points to the conclusion that our insatiable hunger for stuff and unsustainable experience stems from our uniquely modern isolation. For the first time in the history of the planet, we are collectively disconnected — disconnected from each other, disconnected from the natural world. That disconnection creates a dis-ease that beats like a drum in our unconscious, making us vulnerable to the advertisements that promise a better life through purchase. In a typically human response, we buy, we accumulate, we seek endless experience — it is no longer enough to be.
The solutions, therefore, must begin not with alternative energy but with reconnection: the creation of intentional community to take the place of the extended family and village that we’ve lost in the last 100 years; and a reconnection to the natural world.
There are so many ways to begin.It may be enough to find a place to walk among the trees everyday and grow tomatoes on the balcony — or to become a share farmer. Across the US, urban folk are buying an experience of farm life — if we all embraced this simple idea, it would become infinitely easier for organic farmers to succeed, and would enrich city folk with both experience and affordable, healthy food. (Read about it below.)
Today, I encourage you to worry less about funding your retirement and to think instead about how you can build relationships that will sustain into your very old age. Don’t worry about burgeoning health care costs — think instead about how you can walk for 30 minutes by the water or in the trees and, in so doing, take the single most powerful action toward health. Think about one meaningful change you could make toward a more sustainable and joyous life. (Is it possible you could work from home one or two days a week?)
The problem with projecting the problem out there is that the solution then lays outside our control. When the problem is us — and the problem is almost always ultimately us — we are also the solution.
Four minutes of complete happiness
Matt Harding dances with the world — this is my new morning meditation. As suggested, don’t forget to click ‘view in high quality’ below the video screen before viewing.