Sorrow, Stress, and Sustainability

The mission has always been the same. My pain and agony has always been the same. The fact is, life is hard, and it's so easy to get so caught up in living it that you forget to better yourself. It's too easy to hurt the people around you.

I've never really known how to understand this. I've never quite figured out how to internalize and make sense of a world so eager to tear itself apart. Yet somehow, I've always known that there is something that I can do. Something that I can contribute. I just never knew what.

I had a lightbulb moment today.

Sorrow

I spoke above about the pain caused by persons to one another--this is my sorrow. A coach of mine advised me to explore within myself what makes my heart hurt, and that was it. Loud and clear.

Lately I've been following a lot about the sustainability movement, whether sustainable housing a la Michael Reynolds's earthships or sustainable practices as championed by the Valhalla Movement) who profess themselves a "tribe of storytellers out to proliferate freedom culture"). Reading about these topics and viewing podcasts on youtube gave me a jolt of energy, but left me confused. I knew that there was a passion here, too, much as there is a passion within me for stories, for language, for communication and healing. Like a mind/body sort of thing.

But what was the connection?

The Biggest W

There are, of course, the five Ws: who, what, where, when and why (and how). For me, the big question about my sorrow was Why. Why do we hurt each other? Why is it so easy? Easy to the point of subconsciousness. Easy to the point of remorselessness. We don't mean to hurt each other, mostly. So what's the deal?

Stress also reduces pigmentation.

It could be stressors. Money, work, obligation, money, taxes, money. You've heard this all before in some neatly-tied diatribe about the evils of consumption and capitalism, but I mean even more basically that our survival (food, water, and shelter) is dependent on income (work), and there are only so many lucky few who come home from a day of work feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the day.

More likely, we get short. We're ill-tempered. We spent all day fixing the mistakes of our coworkers or (ha!) making our own. We've spent all day watching the baby. The baby is teething. Payroll is due. Insurance won't cover the birthing costs from a year ago (true story). The computer's broken. We're out of food--at least, anything we want in the moment. The car won't start. The car might not start tomorrow, or the next day. The sun sets at 4:00 and everything is dismal. It's cold. You're tired. You have a headache. Your hours have been cut.

Problems. Issues. Stressors.

The Answer?

Honestly, I'm not sure. But I think sustainability is an interesting place to start. Good for the environment? Sure, that's great. Healthy? Excellent.

But liberating? You bet. Because as nice as some of the outcomes of sustainability may be, the one I'm most interested in is the freedom to walk away from stress. It's the chance to free up your mind to live in the present moment. It's the freedom to focus on what you're saying, and why, and to whom.

All of these can be managed by personal willpower alone. But maybe we need a guidebook or guide to show us how to make it a little bit easier.

And that's at least part of the connection I've been looking for.