Just a quick update cause I really should be studying. I’ve been recently getting into Public Health studies and it’s interdisciplinary approach. I’m really unsure of my future right now. But I guess I’m super happy about just taking the small things into my own hands.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with my good friend Caroline. She’s the new Vice-President Administration for the AMS and we’ve had many a conversation about sustainability and the many ways we can get lost and how she can apply it to her new job. I guess what I want to blog about is not our encounter yesterday, but the week before.
She’d read a book. I forgot the name of it. But she read a book about sustainability and was in despair about how she could possibly let go of some of her dreams to walk the walk and put sustainability at the forefront of her life.
Walking the walk – now that’s a concept that we all know is hard, not only to begin, but to carry through and continue. I know I myself have argued with myself over taking the train or flying to California to visit friends and family. What can I afford? What do I want? Do I have time? It’s all so overwhelming. What can we all do?
So what did I tell her? I told about where I was. I was where she was. Frustrated. Angry at myself. Unsure. Lost. Lonely. Fearful. I told her about this blog. About how my goal was one step at a time.
I told her about how Aidan started to try to be a vegetarian and then a vegan.
I told her about how my studies for my final project said knowledge isn’t enough. Knowledge makes us lost and make’s us fearful and also leaves us feeling powerless in such a huge and open world. I told her about Transformative Sustainability Learning and UBC’s Place and Promise on Sustainability Learning Pathways.
I told her about S.H.A.A.:
Sustainability Knowledge
Holistic Thinking
Awareness and Integration
Action for Change
I told her about how Community Based Learning and Community Based Research and working together were showing, more and more, to be some of the most powerful behavioural changing models.
I told her about how John Robinson said actions, seeing, doing, dreaming changed our behaviour more than our values can and more effectively.
And I told her what I thought. That there isn’t a right way. That sustainability doesn’t have a definition. That is both it’s beauty and it’s curse, like many of the greatest things in life. We are all lost and we all have a path and we can’t all be the same, but we can take the little steps. We can take it one choice at a time. One small step at a time. A little bit at a time.
And day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything is different.
So yesterday I stood in the grocery store to buy lunch for us. I looked at the beef and chicken and salmon for 20 minutes. And then I grabbed a baguette from Terra Breads (organic baked goods, contributing to local environmental and culinary organizations), some Turkey from Lilydale (farms in BC) and cheese from the Comox Valley.
Then we had a picnic in her office and talked about how this summer, we would bike when we could, tandem the sea wall, and visit the UBC Farm every week and try new foods.
I hope she knows just by wanting to take the steps, she’s making a difference. And I hope she feels better.
Song of the week: Chris Young – You, It Boy – Olivia Noelle ft. Kurt Schneider cover