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October 15 has been designated “Blog Action Day”, when bloggers are encouraged to write about our environment and things regular people can do to reduce their environmental footprint on the planet and help steward the environment we all depend upon to sustain our lives.
This is pretty easy to do if you’re living on a shoestring budget, as our previous excursions into bargain-hunting, recycling, thrifting and doing for yourself have demonstrated amply. Yet at a time when the Nobel Peace Prize can go to Al Gore for his crusade to educate the nations of the world about the threat of global warming and how our poor choices of lifestyle are contributing to it, this is a great time to do some thinking about how we live. Maybe earn a new appreciation not just for our cleverness in being able to get by on less, but for our wisdom in doing so. Even if we didn’t have to.
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We have only one world. It has to nurture us and sustain us for as long as we live, and still have enough left to offer the same benefits to our children and grandchildren, on down the line. Politicians come and go, generations come and go, even nations come and go. Our world doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. It has what it has. Only so much water, only so much air, only so many resources. Once we’ve used it all up, this old world won’t be making more.
So the conscious choices we make about how we will live will affect generations of our descendents down the line. Living on the thrifty ‘fringe’ of this greedy, thoughtless, conspicuously consumptive American society can make us more aware of our responsibility to tread lightly on this earth. It can give us a source of real knowledge about how much our habits matter to the future. It can – and likely will before current economic tough times are over – turn more than a few of us into “rabid environmentalists” who will not only choose to keep on living consciously when easy money comes around again, but who will become effective evangelists for convincing others to live consciously.
It might just be that we’ll find ourselves enjoying a greater affinity with the 6+ billion other humans on this planet who aren’t conspicuous consumers, and motivate us to get involved in helping to make their lives better. It might be that we’ll find ourselves getting healthier and happier for the physical efforts we put into doing for ourselves, in the learning that the best things in life really ARE free.
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Our children may happily learn that lesson too, finding that a week’s camping, fishing and hiking in the mountains is a greater adventure than a day at Disney World. Why, before we know it, those kids just might be collecting food and clothing for area charities, volunteering their time to tutor younger children, perhaps even volunteering compassionate caregiving to the old and sick in our communities who are too often shut away from the world like an embarrassment.
So on this Blog Action Day, I hope my readers will take just a moment from the worry and cares of daily life and the stress of having to make do with less, just to appreciate that by making do with less they are contributing much to a more sustainable world. Check out some of the great blogs linked below for good ideas on how to do even more. Congratulate yourselves! You’ve earned it…
Links:
Raising a Healthy Family: Going Green with the Kids
