let's have some tea, and slow down

heres a small list of things to do if you want to save the environment that i complied in my head while dusting vents in a gym-

1) you have to start very small. you can't expect to change your entire lifestyle drastically, because it just won't work. thus, the reason that diets and new years resolutions always fail.

2) start to live with less stuff. i mean, this isn't a hard thing to do. solving the environmental issue isn't about money... in fact, if you live simply you will spend far less money. how much of the stuff in your house gets used daily? does it ever really get used?

theres an adage that says "i life full of things is an empty life". Now, take it a bit further... if you do too many things, if you consume yourself with endless plans, meetings, groups, and time costraints you will forget that there is even beauty on this earth.

how about taking one or two, maybe 6, things off the ol' to do list, and start to love the few things that are left... like coffee on a friend's backdeck, or taking deep breaths over a good book of prose.

3) start to re-think how you eat. pick up a copy of "Simply in Season", or "The 100 mile diet" and start to eat more intelligently.

start buying food with stories, with a big of dignity. food that is handed to you from a farmers hand, still weathered with a bit of dirt from the field... as oppposed to something grown in california, processed in a factory in ontario, and shipped to a safeway in BC (thats a whole lot of mileage).

this is not to say "diet", its to say learn how to buy things in season, which have not been shipped across the world seven times over.

coffee and green tea are one thing... you can't grow coffee in cold places, where it rains a lot. but salt, wheat, apples- these are all things we can produce closer to home. you can easily grow some tomatoes on your backdeck (something which i have to remember to do next year. gah, after i simplify my life and stop doing so much).

in the words of some wise person (it might have been syllvester stallone) changing shouldn't be drastic. if you eat 10 pieces of pizza for dinner everyday, start eating 6. you have to start somewhere.

4) try some fair trade coffee, tea, pants, whatever. you are helping farmers earn an honest living, and supporting income for those who have none. and you're also saving a lot of processing that coffee generally goes through. and it just tastes better.

aaaand, try this site out


~

on a completely un-related note, theres this weird pattern that has started to develop in all my recent conversations- about love, life, pasta, women, and whatever else. the pattern is that i always fall into a despair by the end of the conversation.

i start to talk about things i can't comprehend that well- community, justice, poverty. then i talk about ideals to solve problems that i can't live up to. plans which are too big for me to live out right away.

and then i worry that i will never "find someone" ... someone to walk beside, and translate all, or maybe some, of the mysteries of life with. that would probably be my "lonely-student-who-has-been-single-for-a-long-time" speaking

hmm. i tend to get sad way too often. i should really do something about that. oh well.

lets have tea, sometime today. hmm. but since we all live so far away from each other i will drink some tea, think about you, and hope you will do the same. later.

-Adam