I used to think I was normal. I stress about a light on in an empty room. I feel a small twinge of anxiety when I pass a dripping tap. I didn’t know that these things were running subsurface in my subconscious until I married. Actually it was years after I had started to learn what it means to share my whole life with another person that this person called me out on my behaviour. Through her insight I was awakened to a river of negativity that courses through my soul. It’s still there by the way so believe me when I say I’m writing from the heart.
Maybe you’ve come to this level of self awareness and I’m late to the party but through this process of gazing upon my subterranean river I’ve noticed the connection between the surface springs that I’ve been explaining away for a long time. When someone leaves the tap running as they brush their teeth I get a tightness in my lower back. You see, I spent a portion of my childhood in a desert where water was scarce. I recall times when the public broadcasting channel would air low budget music videos of kids singing “you have to save water, please, please or we’ll be on our knees.” Now I live near the largest concentration of fresh water on the planet where concerns over flooding are more likely than scarcity.
So, I try to relax my back, tighten up my smile and passively become aggressive towards the tap runner.
As my self awareness has grown, this teeth brushing well-head has been traced to the river of negativity born from wastefulness in general. If flows with anger and anxiety and concern over spilled oil, discarded food, global imports, dollar store toys, wrapping paper and soooo much more. I seem to be this antennae for signals of wasteful behaviour clogging an atmosphere which only I breathe. You should know, I have found my fellow receptors. You may know them as twitter trolls, green peace dingy pilots, or just general nags in your life. And I would say that most people can feel this way from time to time or on certain topics but what I’m coming to realize is not everyone feels it all the time or at this level. I’m realizing that many people have much healthier lives where they don’t attempt to bear the burdens of the planet in the muscles of their lower back. This is a good thing because let me tell you it will not add days to your years or strength to your bones.
A life lived in anxiety over the wastefulness of a seemingly absent minded humanity is wrong.
For those of us who feel wastefulness at every interaction need to seek a single solution or they will risk drowning in that river at the overwhelming impossibility of “fixing” each and every human we interact with. Because let’s be honest, nature is not wasteful in the absence of man. Every part of every dead, destroyed, desolated organic life form, mineral or element is re-purposed through time and the creativity of the created. People are the ones who find ways to waste. We create things that cannot be re-purposed. We desolate to the point of being irrecoverable. The solutions you’re seeking to solve all of the wasteful interactions inevitably come back to the person who is producing them and you can’t solve people. YOU cannot “fix” anyone.
There is a way that I’ve found though. It’s a narrow road that requires discipline and devotion. It’s a path that was created by one of the few things that people cannot create...Love. Some of you may see where I’m going with this but don’t skip this next part.
In my time on the earth interacting with many people over the years I have never seen anyone more persuasive, targeted, or inspiring in their approach to changing someone’s behaviour than Jesus Christ. This is because Jesus comes at you with Love. He opens up a way forward in every single situation that not only changes people and their behaviour for the better but leaves those people feeling on top of the world. When someone encounters Jesus and finally allows their hear to “get it” they turn into more of a person than they have ever been. They become more alive somehow.
This is the single solution to wastefulness. Interacting with the living person of Jesus stirs a mindfulness towards the created. Pausing in prayer and meditation on the giver of life inspires a desire to bring life. It’s such a beautiful process because it is so personal as well.
If you ask me what are the top three things you can do to help creation I will have no idea what to tell you. If you ask Jesus he will tell you something so specific to your own life it will have so much more impact than any blog, enviro guide or mentor.
I will say one more thing on this. When I cross paths with someone who has conversed with Jesus and we get talking about the environment it is very different than someone who is burdened by anxiety and fear. If I tell a Christ follower that I don’t think bananas should be part of Canadian culture because of the carbon emissions, degraded quality of the fruit and rape that it causes on the Central American landscape something clicks. They might not understand climate change or food nutrition but they do understand the heart of a Honduran brother or sister. Not because they have met that person but because Jesus has met that person and they know Jesus. They know the sorrow of the persecuted and hurting and can draw the connection between that pain and a banana because Jesus inspires that in them. With a new found awareness they have the motivation produced by love to act and live just a little better than they did before. They already had the solution, they just needed awareness. When I cross paths with someone living day to day in a hopeless world and tell them the story of the banana they may act out of guilt, they may feel sad for a time but more often than not they say “what can I do, that’s just how it is.” The absence of love leaves a hopeless void. The presence of love produces unfathomable motivation to defeat wastefulness in the name of Jesus.