Personal Sustainability
I have begun to notice a new conversation being had. It’s so new that I have been skirting around it for quite a while, without having the vocabulary for it. But then someone, after listening to me flounder for a while with much splashing and gasping, gave me the phrase I needed: “personal sustainability”. A new phrase, for a new paradigm.
Several recently I’ve been disturbed by job ads for organizations that are trying to change the world for the better, but which are stuck in the old paradigm. These ads refer to “hard-workers who thrive in an aggressive, fast-paced environment with relentless attention to the bottom-line” or boast, “we help people thrive on chaos”, or the like.
I knew these ads disturbed me, but until I got the words “personal sustainability”, I wasn’t quite sure whether there was an acceptable vocabulary for explaining why. How can you say, in America today, “I don’t want a job that requires me to work like a dog until I die, smiling”?
“Personal sustainability” is the magic phrase that you employ in such circumstances. It says, “I can do a good job, even a great job, but I’m a human being and I want to have a life, and what’s more, I think we all deserve one”.
Personal sustainability goes further than hackneyed stuff like “work/life balance” (which we all know is measured out with the boss’s thumb held firmly on the scales). It fits within a larger context of sustainability, with associations of recycling (hey, don’t use up your staff and then throw them away), and conservation (let’s not clear cut that forest and eliminate those valuable endangered species, let’s log it selectively and improve the diversity while we go). This wider context gives it, I hope, respectability.
A friend of mine recently asked for part-time work. Her employer said, “You understand, it’s a matter of the bottom-line; if we give people part-time, it’ll cost us more”. My friend replied, “I think it’s time we reframed the bottom-line to include not just money, but also people”. Yay for her. That’s a personal sustainability conversation.
I recently said in a job-interview that the word “relentless” in the ad made me nervous. I said I didn’t want relentless, ruthless, or any of those other, similar words, in my life, and that I was looking for an organization where change begins at home. To my surprise, they reacted very well, and even went so far as to say they understood. Luckily we were talking on the phone because the very act of daring to speak something so heretical had left me sweating and trembling.
I think (I hope) such conversations will become more common in the next ten years. We can’t carry on at the pace we’ve been going. We’re draining our resources much faster than we can renew them. We’re getting accustomed to hearing this about the planet, but the taboo may just be lifting on saying them about ourselves. And the two, I believe, are connected.
Solving one may be a key to solving the other. If you never have time to smell the roses, what would you care if they’re asphalted over to provide easier parking? On the other hand, if you work at home and have time to take a thoughtful walk in the afternoon sun under the butter yellow gingko trees, you’d begin to care more about air pollution in your neighborhood, and notice the homeless people, and maybe even pick up some trash.
You’d go home pink-cheeked and inspired, you’d hear birds, you’d be nicer to your kids, and you’d begin to think in different ways about what constitutes a bottom-line.
Tags: business, culture, environment, home, personal-sustainability, social-change
Sep 08, 2008
So, not to sound like a devil’s advocate, but can you distinguish “personal sustainability” from “enlightened self-interest,” which is largely the basis for selfish and what could be said to be one of the root causes for rampant selfish overuse of the planet by a very small minority of its inhabitants (US)?
It’s certainly in my self-interest to reuse and recycle, but wouldn’t that leave me in the old paradigm. How does personal sustainability propose a paradigm shift to the old stuff?
I also want to object to the word “magic” in “magic phrase”. I realize you were speaking colloquially, but it’s really not a magic phrase at all; rather, it is simply remembering to remain committed to your aim of personal sustainability. In this sense, “personal sustainability” is like a “sacred word” in contemplative meditation, that draws you back tot he meditation if your mind wanders. I know it’s splitting a hair, but magic gives agency to other things (not us), and I’m sure that personal sustainability is fundamentally about (a new kind of?) personal responsibility as well.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Sep 08, 2008
Hi Snowleopard. I hope that the ’sustainability’ piece ought to rule out the selfish overuse of the planet. Though I am continually surprised by how many ‘green’ people are turn up at talks with a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand and a pre-packed salad in a plastic shell box in the other–I guess out of personal sustainability.
I guess it’s that process of learning to set one’s actions in a wider context. I wish the infrastructure made it easier to make no-brainer decisions that are good for the planet, but mostly it seems stacked the other way, so that it takes effort not to trash the earth.
It’s a slow process, educating people, and I feel your frustration, because it’s too slow. We need more action, faster, than we can possibly get. The maximum we do is so much less than the minimum we need. And of course, we’re guilty of sitting here typing on computers which were toxically manufactured, and using up power to run them…
As to the magic piece, I find that the right words DO have a ‘magic’ effect. Suddenly a previously taboo topic becomes acceptable, even fashionable. It is the agency of something else–a new meme perhaps–it certainly isn’t anything to do with me, since I am expressing the same thing, but the new word has enabled me to tap into some new frame, to borrow a concept from George Lakoff.
Sep 09, 2008
Rachael,
You have hit the nail right square on the head for me!!! I, too, have been looking for a way to explain to friends, family, and potential employers why I don’t want to go “back to the rat race”. My family recently relocated from Idaho to Washington. Before we moved, my life was spent on the corporate ladder, perpetually trying to reach ever higher. I became burned out, depressed, anxious, irritable, and just plain bad company. My family suffered the worst of it, as I had no energy at the end of the day to be with them. Not to mention, doing housework, going to church, volunteering at school, or just spending time with my children and husband.
Today, my life is much more peaceful and fulfilling. My family is well taken care of and I have made them the focus of my life. I have become an intentional mother, wife, and homemaker. I work part time as an administrative assistant, in my own home. All of my daily tasks are performed via internet and phone. My associate reaps the benefit of my expertise and I benefit by not having to stress out about all of the extra “stuff’ that came with my former career life. Leaving that career life behind has helped me to become less of a consumer as well. I don’t use as much gas in the car, eat out for lunch every day, buy new shoes and clothes, etc., etc.,
Thanks so much for sharing this new paradigm and its accompanying vocabulary.
Sep 10, 2008
There are different seasons to lives……..and generations of families are spread out over the seasons………so if we lived in extended families and supported each other then the work season of our lives would not feel unsustainable perhaps.
Sep 10, 2008
If you found this post interesting you might want to check out an organization called Take Back Your Time: http://www.timeday.org
Sep 10, 2008
we do work magic, we ARE the magic, it is not independent or split from us…
Sep 10, 2008
Allen in Eugene,
Thanks for the tip on the website. I did check it out….pretty cool! I’ll have to visit it often.
JS,
I agree with you about the extended family…that very reason, to be near family, is why we moved from Idaho to Washington. My husband’s family is here…we wanted to reconnect with them on a daily basis, not just at holidays and spring break. Our son is now closer to his Grandparents and cousins, and aunts and uncles. Our life is far less stressful than it was…we have dinner together every night (grandparents included), we have much more quality family time, our marriage is better, and we are healthier. I am a firm believer supporting family extensions. Life is good…
Sep 10, 2008
rachael –
i think you’ve tapped into a very real challenge that we face today. on one hand, we are aware that there are decisions that we can make everyday that are better for the world around us and for the world that will proceed us. currently, many, though not all, of those decisions are less efficient; they may require more time, cost more, or fall outside of social norms. however, we also know that there are still influential people arguing that climate change is not driven by human actions and that getting others to make good choices will take an immense amount of work. work involving myriad talent: educating, inventing, campaigning, singing, playing, fundraising, writing, networking, researching, legislating, painting, and socializing. maintaining “personal sustainability” becomes significantly more challenging when you are driven to see sustainability flourish around you. how can WE make it a communal value, rather than an individual quest? perhaps through this struggle we are not challenged to forgo material goods, but our time.
Sep 10, 2008
Rachael,
I coined a slogan more than a year ago for a Natural Living Expo that I was attending as a Reiki Practitioner: Global Sustainability begins with Self-Care. For so many of us working on educating and empowering the masses we are running on coffee and meals-to-go because we are mission driven. I have been in phases of that myself. I always go back to the thought that what if we all just slowed down and lived as we preached. We would be the most peaceful and happy people in the country and then wouldn’t everyone WANT to know how to live like us? It would seem far easier to teach the ones that want to be taught rather than trying to persuade or recruit the masses out of fear of the future of our planet. The most enduring changes are made out of love and the intrinsic desire to see improvement.
Self-Care might seem selfish to some folks, but I believe that as we care for ourselves and our loved ones, that caring extends to the Earth and our community. Self-Care is giving ourselves the oxygen first so we might be most effective in helping others.
Thanks for the dialogue! Great comments!
~a
Sep 10, 2008
The posting on “personal sustainability” and attached comments rang several bells. Since “personal” is the basis of “community” formed by linked personals, “personal sustainability” is yet another facet of the spinning crystal that’s in motion encouraging greater awareness of and modified response to our customary lifestyle choices.
My North American home is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – the Keweenaw Peninsula, that finger of land jutting into Lake Superior. For several years a group of us have focused on developing the Keweenaw Sustainability Project (KSP), supporting and initiating sustainability efforts in our peninsula with its population of 40,000-45,000. In a few days, we’re hosting a retreat for a Nature and Community Writing Workshop (http://www.keweenawsustainability.org/2008retreat/), which will showcase and hopefully inspire greater personal and community sustainability practices. I’m heartened by such efforts all over North America and view such work as leading to the critical mass that will transform Western-style life practices.
I’m emailing you from Kerala, India, a state that’s a model for less overdeveloped societies in educational and health care practices. Literacy is nearly 100 percent and there’s universal health care. I’ve commissioned and am documenting the building of a prototypical energy efficient house with the Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development (COSTFORD). The inception of the project was showcased in the December 25, 2007 EcoSpace.cc posting (enter “Kerala house” in the site’s search box in the lower right corner).
I do realize the incongruity of flying half way around the world to build this house of indigenous materials and appropriate technology along with my Indian “family of friends” and COSTFORD colleagues, but this is yet another facet of “personal responsibility” and my contribution to reaching transformative critical mass in relation to the built environment.
Oct 02, 2008
I love this article. I encapsulates my feelings about my own personal vocational goals, as well as much of what I think is wrong with the American workforce today. People are more productive, useful and effective when they have proper time to rest and recharge. Pushing ourselves to the limit only brings everyone closer to chaos, rather than engendering an environment of healthy growth. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!