Born to be Green?

Warming up milk this morning to make yogurt (lately I have become addicted to home-made yogurt), I turned my head away for just  a second – Murphy’s Law! – runaway milk foam flooded the cook top. Is there anything worse then the smell of burnt milk?  I reached for the paper towels -  white, bleached, non-post consumer paper towels. A whole bunch of them, to be precise.

Do you remember how easy it was, say, 3 years ago to declare yourself an environmentalist?  A weekly visit to the farmer’s market, a trip to recycling depot and viola, honest to goodness I felt like a responsible citizen. Things are different now. Every day brings more and more ways to be earth friendly, and often that involves buying – ” new, improved, environmentally conscious and better for you products.” Two days ago in San Francisco airport I saw a sign ” Be responsible while you are flying. Buy your carbon offset credits here”. Wait a second, I thought those were included in the price of airfare that has nearly tripled in the last five years! Just  trying to make sense of the food labels is enough to give me an instant headache with the side effect of ADHD. Here is a curious thought – the same companies that encouraged vigorous spending in the 80-s and 90 -s are still …..well, encouraging vigorous spending – just on different products. Einstein once said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Hmm…

I could of course write about 10 handy ways to be more green; 5 easy ways to encourage recycling in your household; I can write about why organically grown produce is much better for you or how horrible it is to put the unknown chemicals on your skin. But…

There are books written on the subject, movies made and I am sure every e-zine that arrives into your mailbox this week will have suggestions , ideas and recipes on how to greenerize your life in some important and tedious way.

So how about the inconvenient truth – why do we choose to be green?

Is that really a choice? And are we really green?

After all, being green is in vogue now days.  We have been guilt – tripped, shamed, or scared into this affair by media, friends, Hollywood superstars and even former vice president. But deep down, isn’t it just so much easier to reach for a bunch of environmentally unfriendly paper towels to wipe up the spilled milk?

A while ago I toyed with the idea of becoming vegetarian.  The concept of the book I was reading at the time was interesting – the drive to become a vegetarian, the book explained, has to come from the change inside; one needs to have a  deep desire to follow that lifestyle successfully. I dug around for my own reasons to become vegetarian and  I couldn’t find that intense internal motivation. I made peace with meat and  now do enjoy an occasional burger.

I’ve just attended the “Free to Love”  emotional freedom workshop put on by the Chopra Center.   As we worked with the concept of forgiveness,  these words had stuck with me:

” Often, we forgive too fast, forgetting to do the deep work required for true forgiveness. In fact,  we simply  sweep resentment, anger, jealousy under the rug and wear the mask of forgiveness”

Is there a chance we are sweeping our un-greenness under the rug? If we lack that deep driving desire,  the need to love and protect the planet we live on, being environmentally conscious can be draining, tedious, exhausting.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking you to abandon all the earth friendly initiatives you’ve taken so far. I merely invite you to explore you reasons.

For myself I found that feeling connected to the Earth in a very deep way – kind of like when you go on a long hike and there’s nothing but you and the big blue sky had made all the difference. It only takes once to experience yourself as part of this planet – in however small way, and suddenly there is no more effort in bringing your own grocery bags, recycling, buying organic food or changing your consumer habits – there’s simply no other way of living; or may be, it is living from the different level of awareness.

If being green at the moment feels like hard work, may be it’s time to re-examine your motives. Spend some time outside, smell the sweetness of spring in the air, let the breeze caress your face, be amazed by the beating wings of the hummingbird…Before you know it, your greenness will be thrust upon you. No effort required!

This video has put an end to bottled water in my house. Enjoy!