There's a taichi concept that the stance should be big enough to be supportive, but small enough to be stable. You want to take steps that claim enough space to move freely, yet not so big that you have to reach beyond your balance point to claim. Arm movements should be big and full to experience momentum and gravity, yet not so big as to pull you off balance.
This teaching applies to life in general... as most taichi lessons seem to do.
I was at Stew Leonard's the other day and spent so much there that I was eligible for 2 free ice cream cones! There's a dilemma. I live alone, I was shopping for a nice dinner I was going to make a friend... what could I possibly do with 2 ice cream cones? I can barely finish one! So I ordered one... fully prepared for them to tell me I had to get my two cones at once... But no, they honor their word, they wrote on my receipt that I had another cone left. Very satisfying little place inside that decides to just take enough and not more.
I also am part of a CSA - community supported agriculture. You buy a share of a farm's harvest in advance, and when it comes in you pick up your share from a central delivery location. A great way to buy food farm fresh and organic, this one happens to be biodynamic also. Well, living alone it is a lot of food: last year I shared it with my brother. Well, I thought a lot about whether or not to participate this year: so much food, what to do with more and more food accumulating in the fridge! Well, it dawned on me that though I can't take more food than my share, I can take less! Whatever doesn't get claimed from the week's harvest is donated to a soup kitchen. If I take less than my full share, I will have the right amount of food and the rest will not be wasted. Seems like an obvious solution - but all those little voices inside that say, "I paid for it, it's all mine!" chime in with all those feelings of entitlement, accumulation, inadequacy.
It's easy enough to dismiss the choice as trivial - but you know, if we all just took only what we need and no more, if we all participated a little bit more with our own energy rather than just take, if we all give a little more and consume a little less... it all starts with little ol' me making little ol' decisions. Little decisions add up to make the difference.
I take the stairs now whenever I can. So I get some exercise: but I save a little electricity. One tiny drop less oil being used on my account - what's the big deal? Well, I just feel like I am doing some little good, and getting fitter in the process. And this way I also don't need to go to a a gym to get on an oil-driven machine to make me fitter!
What's the harm in trying to make a difference?
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Who to believe?
I was looking for a nice relaxing nature documentary to watch... "Coral Reef Adventure" sounds so beautiful, no? Well, I put it on and first thing it starts out with is how the coral reefs are endangered... and this was going to be a little exploration in why they are dying in certain places...
I was a little unprepared, I have to admit, and though had it on, couldn't watch too carefully... I will have to get back to it again when I am more able to digest the information.
Turns out there are a lot of factors. Sea temperatures around coral rising as little as 2 degrees will cause the photosynthesizing algae to leave the coral, leaving the coral bereft of energy to grow... which does seem to be happening as a part of global warming. In addition there are problems of overharvesting the coral and its inhabitants... And a problem with silt from large scale logging operations both clogging the waters and clouding the sunlight... I never knew about the point of view of the coral reefs, but I certainly knew about the environmental problems that exist. It still catches in my throat every time I discover the scale of the problems - which we have known about for decades and still haven't solved.
Contrast that with my dad's sunny opinions: and my dad is a scientist and worked for the UN Environment Program. He figures we will have another 50-60 years of oil, and within 20 years we will be using extensive alternative energies... Maybe he watches too much Chinese cable TV, with their cheery propaganda? Or could it really be that our crisis will be more of a transition?
Well, as was pointed out in "A Crude Awakening," "Stone Age man didn't leave the Stone Age because he ran out of stones. Mankind didn't leave off using horses because he ran out of hay." In other words in no other period of human society have we ever depended so heavily and dramatically on as finite and polluting energy source and building material as oil.
Whoever you believe about the time and scale of the changes to come, they shall be dramatic, and within our lifetimes - how could it be otherwise? So snap in your seatbelts and take the ride.
We shall all be in this together, all colors of human shall ride this wave together, whether we can all get along or not, whether we can all agree or not... and maybe that is the meaning of the whole adventure in the first place: that we realize our differences are much less than our similarities, that our conflicts are less important than our harmonies. "I'd like to teach the world to sing!"
I was a little unprepared, I have to admit, and though had it on, couldn't watch too carefully... I will have to get back to it again when I am more able to digest the information.
Turns out there are a lot of factors. Sea temperatures around coral rising as little as 2 degrees will cause the photosynthesizing algae to leave the coral, leaving the coral bereft of energy to grow... which does seem to be happening as a part of global warming. In addition there are problems of overharvesting the coral and its inhabitants... And a problem with silt from large scale logging operations both clogging the waters and clouding the sunlight... I never knew about the point of view of the coral reefs, but I certainly knew about the environmental problems that exist. It still catches in my throat every time I discover the scale of the problems - which we have known about for decades and still haven't solved.
Contrast that with my dad's sunny opinions: and my dad is a scientist and worked for the UN Environment Program. He figures we will have another 50-60 years of oil, and within 20 years we will be using extensive alternative energies... Maybe he watches too much Chinese cable TV, with their cheery propaganda? Or could it really be that our crisis will be more of a transition?
Well, as was pointed out in "A Crude Awakening," "Stone Age man didn't leave the Stone Age because he ran out of stones. Mankind didn't leave off using horses because he ran out of hay." In other words in no other period of human society have we ever depended so heavily and dramatically on as finite and polluting energy source and building material as oil.
Whoever you believe about the time and scale of the changes to come, they shall be dramatic, and within our lifetimes - how could it be otherwise? So snap in your seatbelts and take the ride.
We shall all be in this together, all colors of human shall ride this wave together, whether we can all get along or not, whether we can all agree or not... and maybe that is the meaning of the whole adventure in the first place: that we realize our differences are much less than our similarities, that our conflicts are less important than our harmonies. "I'd like to teach the world to sing!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
