I’ve come to accept plastic, sort of reconciling myself to its place in the world. Where ever I ramble, I run into it – vacuum packed tofu at the farm stand, fluorescent-colored bottle lids on the forest floor, broken lawn chairs at the curbside. I have to face it — plastic is here to stay.
I always cringe, though, when a waitress asks if she can bring a ‘to go’ box for my leftovers. This usually means Styrofoam, a form of plastic I don’t consider a friend — nor does the planet. Once Styrofoam is set free to roam the earth, it’s anti-social — doesn’t break down, mix or mingle like wood and paper do, giving themselves to the making of soil, contributing to the life cycle.
In fact, Styrofoam may never decompose.
That it keeps to itself may be a good thing though, because when it circulates, it wreaks havoc, causing cancer. I won’t put Styrofoam out with my garbage. And when I invariably acquire a piece from a generous neighbor bringing Christmas cookies, I gracefully accept my plate then sequester it to the closet to use as a paint palette. But I won’t take home Styrofoam intentionally.
So I ask, Can I have a piece of tin foil to wrap my veggie curry in? My preference, though, is to bring home leftovers in a plastic bowl and lid I keep in a potluck kit in my trunk and am trying to get in the habit of bringing with me into restaurants.
Plastic has become a basic element of our mobile lifestyle. Light and unbreakable, it’s convenient to carry. Cheap to buy, plastic cups, forks and bottles are seen as disposables and discarded after one use.
But throwing out plastic is costly.
While a paper bag takes a month to become soil and a cardboard box around two, a plastic bag can take a good hundred years to break down. And when it does, it doesn’t blend, but stays intact as tiny particles that creep into ground water and litter oceans.
Plastic pills are taken up by plants, fish, animals and us, or just hang around. Pacific Ocean currents have collected some of our throw-aways in a swirling plastic soup the size of Texas. Fish dine on bottle caps; birds don six-pack ring necklaces. Come high tide, the sea may deliver our debris to our shore.
For now, plastic seems content to seep from containers into hot soup, leftovers and lattes. Tricksters, called BPA, sneak into bodies and mimic female hormones, messing with reproductive and nervous systems. Scientists have seen BPA handed down for three generations in fish.
Let’s face it. Plastic lingers — perhaps in protest of our disregard.
So, I limit my holdings, making friends with the few pieces I have, trying to reuse them for their duration. Once I’ve got plastic in my sight, I consider it an orphan, with nowhere to go, at least for a long time. Or, I eye it as a terrorist, holding it captive, protecting the world from its antics. And sometimes, I simply recognize its value and reuse it.
Walking my neighborhood on collection day, I rescue chairs, tables and shelves from languishing at the dump. Or, I postpone their recycling.
When possible, I recycle. But not all plastic can be recycled. And only about 5% of what can, does.
Perhaps plastic has made us lazy. Intended to make lives easier, disposables mean less washing of dishes. But our loathing of labor may have led to our scanty recycling. We’ve given our selves more work, though. Because plastic won’t play nice with nature, we’ve got to babysit and find things for it to do, lest we suffer its shenanigans.
I remember the invasion of plastics. As a child, I recoiled at inert orange, purple and pink impersonators upstaging painted clay bowls, horse hair and wooden brushes, rag dolls and cloth diapers. ‘Real’ items breathed with life forces, holding imprints of human touch. They were books to be read offering insights to life, engaging and peaceful to be around. But plastic was a soulless worker who came, got the job done and left without giving you the time of day. Cold and lifeless, it felt deadening. At home, I clung to dwindling natural objects for comfort and inspiration, rubbing my fingers along irregular surfaces, tracing circles of grain, following stitches in rows.
As a young adult, I combed stores for genuine items, to find few. Used goods shops became my treasure-trove of long forgotten wooden pails, tin watering cans and glass pitchers. I brought them home and sheltered them as a naturalist protects a preserve.
I am a purist. This is hard work. Plastic is ubiquitous.
Nowadays, plastic still stops me in my tracks. Yesterday, I shopped for cane sugar, which I use for its mildly sweet flavor and even handedness with my blood sugar level. I scoped out the bulk section of a local natural food store, hoping to scoop some cane sugar into a bag I brought and transfer it to a jar at home. There was none –only palm sugar, a new item. I placed a few crystals on my tongue. ”Not too sweet,” I thought, “but not as rich a flavor.” I moseyed around the aisle to find cane sugar sitting on a shelf encased in a hard plastic container. “Too bad!” I thought, then returned to the bulk section to take a few cups of palm sugar.
That night, I made ice cream with the new sugar but didn’t care as much for the taste. So, do I buy plastic wrapped cane sugar? Or search further hoping to find it in bulk and if not adjust to an alternative? I believe so.
Taking inventory of my trash a few years back, I gasped at the glut of plastic hummus containers, pasta wrappers, forks, spoons and water bottles. Shamed, I vowed to purchase as little as possible packaged in plastic and started making my own yogurt, crackers and tooth powder. This summer, I hope to start making shampoo and pasta and muslin sacks for bulk items and produce.
I now carry a glass water bottle and keep hard plastic plates, cloth napkins and metal cutlery in my car for use at potlucks and take out. I bring in a metal spoon when I frequent a frozen yogurt shop and have ventured into a take-out pizza parlor with my own plate. Perhaps one day this will be common.
What’s plastic good for and what’s best made with natural materials?
I have never been a disposable razor fan and have bought replaceable cartridges. While they consist of little plastic, their cost has skyrocketed. Flabbergasted, I thought back on my dad’s metal double-edged razor using a simple steel blade. To me, this is the pinnacle of razor technology.
I searched family run pharmacies then chain stores but found no such models. Finally, on line, I bought an ‘old fashioned’ razor with paper wrapped blades and no plastic! All for a fraction of the cost of a plastic one! Eureka! The process took nearly as much time as buying a car, but I’ve redirected myself to one more plastic-free path on which I more happily roam!
If I need to have plastic, I try to glean used items from the curbside or buy them in thrift shops. The fields are aplenty. Eco-architect, Richard Sowa, harvested disposed items to make a floating island– a lasagna of plastic and soil.
Shower curtains, sneakers and toothbrushes of recycled material abound. When a new plastic item is called for, recycled is my choice.
But there are things plastic should not get its fingers on. A clear bag holding thrown out food scraps is a sad sight. This imprisonment of banana peels and peach pits from organisms eager to turn them to dirt is a death sentence. I delight in delivering food remains to the ground where they can join the dance of life.
As for us, as I’ve heard said, Let’s care as much about the containers we use as the food we put in them.
I walk to my car after a presentation by Peace Corps volunteers. Tales told of rehabilitating lives, landscapes and structures in far off, impoverished countries get me thinking, What is my calling?
I recollect a story of Mother Teresa hearing of a Hindu family who had not eaten for a long time. She brings them rice and finds children with eyes shining with hunger. Their mom takes the rice and goes out. When she returns, Mother Teresa asks, “Where did you go? What did you do?”
The woman answers, “They are hungry also.”
And who are they? — A Muslim family.
Mother Teresa beams as the children and mom radiate with joy and peace on account of the mom’s love. Mother Teresa doesn’t bring more rice that evening because she wants them, Hindus and Muslims, to enjoy sharing, knowing this will feed a greater hunger.
I probe my pockets for keys, awestruck by this family’s love, pondering the essence of being poor.
Mother Teresa observed, “The spiritual poverty of the West is much greater than the physical poverty of India. In the West millions suffer terrible loneliness and emptiness, feel unloved and unwanted. People are not hungry in the physical sense, but in another way, knowing they need something more than money, yet not knowing what it is.”
I unlock my door acknowledging there are deeper wells to draw from than physical founts; poor folks are the blessed ones.
I bend into my car pondering the loneliness and emptiness in the West to which Mother Teresa points. I struggle to keep connected with others amidst independent living arrangements and time-consuming schedules. I grapple to keep afloat in a flood of belongings and groundswell of tasks. Mother Teresa speaks my mind, What do I do about my spiritual poverty amidst physical excess?
My work is right here.
I sit behind the wheel, mindful of my solitude. I’ve worked hard to create a natural space, just right for me, full of organic cotton, heirloom tomatoes and farmer writer Wendell Berry tales. Yet, I remain preoccupied with e-mails, paperwork and organizing. Writing unending lists of chores to do, struggling to squeeze in time to talk – much less sit – with friends and family.
I fasten my safety belt thinking, the American dream promises if I buy and own more, I make progress. And I do in a sense, when I don’t have enough. But past a point of sufficiency, I bloat my house with a closet clogged with shoes for any occasion, a pantry packed with enough pasta to feed the neighborhood and a table top buried beneath piles of magazines I never look through. At this point, for me, having less is moving forward.
I start my car’s engine and hear Jackson Browne swoon:
These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it’s a feast…
And there’s a God-sized hunger underneath the laughing and the rage (Looking East)
I drive home determined to better feed my soul and cut down on physical preoccupation. As cars race past on the expressway, I wonder what’s essential and what’s unnecessary, best to let pass by. The thought of hungry folks, scantily clad in tin shacks helps me trim the fat. A bowl of rice and beans, a hat and coat, walls and a roof are basically what I require.
I drive past another newly constructed mall thinking, I need to pare down.
As I prepare to change lanes, I glance in my rear view mirror remembering as a teen feeling overwhelmed and saddened in stores. Sprawling selections of milk - one percent, no fat, low fat and whole – beside aisles of shampoo, laundry detergent and toilet paper elicit endless decisions about trivial pursuits. Over time, though, I grow concerned about choosing just the right item for me and quiver between buying green leaf lettuce and romaine. Now I see that getting tied up in meaningless decisions eats up my energy and deprives my soul of simply being satisfied and grateful for food.
As I signal and look to the right, I remember living in Asheville, North Carolina. In this mecca of natural and cultural beauty, my greatest joy is visiting nursing homes to sit and sing with the elderly. Amid empty halls and vacant rooms dotted with card tables, pale, languid faces stare into space. My guitar strings shimmer. Heads and voices lift together in song: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…” Eyes connect in bare stillness, souls unite. I am fed beyond the sustenance of Jackson Browne’s lyrics and Mother Teresa’s tales.
Real connections feed me.
I turn off the AC, roll down the window and sense the heat of the day sting my cheek. Sweat strolls down my rib. A flock of ibis glide by in formation. Hip hop pulsates from a Corvette speeding by. Less buffered, I am in touch.
I exit and U-turn, forgoing thrift store shopping to drive to a hospice care facility and be with my 58 year old friend Richard, spending his last days alone. Gaunt and listless, plodding behind his walker, he beckons me to a garden. We shuffle between palms, love grass and hibiscus and sit on a wooden bench. I slow my breath to settle stirring thoughts and be with him. He soaks in his surroundings and utters labored syllables spelling out his surrender and acceptance. Serenity fills the air. We inhale and exhale the lightness of being. And embrace our goodbyes.
Awakened to the pulse of life, I stroll to my car.
I’ve been isolated and absorbed, caught in a web of material comfort and ease. Casting it away and reaching out to others, I come alive and nourished.
I sit behind the wheel and leave the door ajar. Sun illumines my face. I reach for my calendar and pore over tasks of the week weighing their importance. I make a list of names of folks in need.
Budding branches reach to the sun. When laden with fruit, they bow to the ground. I have more than I need. I must bend down and offer my fill. When I am emptied, I will receive more.
Beside my parked car a red jacaranda sways in the wind. I am reminded of Carol, once vibrant, glowing with life. Now 76, she is trapped in an Alzheimer’s care facility. She got lost driving, couldn’t find her way home. Her son flew down from Philadelphia for the weekend, sold her red hybrid Honda, ruby love seat and crimson-doored house — without her consent. He then placed her in a facility for safe keeping because her memory is weakening. I call her to make plans to visit.
I drive home and clear the cooler, umbrella and beach chair from my back seat to make room for Carol’s wheel chair.
Days later I travel across town. As I wheel Carol through the facility, we watch two dazed women gazing at a flittering TV screen and a man wandering, giggling into space. I notice Carol’s bold demeanor is dulled after a few weeks’ immersion in this muted world. I pull open my passenger door. She struggles to lift her troubled body up holding onto the window frame then shuffles onto the seat. Looking forward she pronounces, I want my car back.
I nod in silence, sit in the driver’s seat and maneuver our way out of the parking lot. Slowly, grasping for words, Carol composes the landscape of delusional characters with whom she dwells, from whom she seeks relief. My heart sinks, knowing she does not belong here, yet aware there is little I can do but take her out for brief respites and listen.
Over the ensuing months, I carve space in my schedule to be with Carol and help carry her load. Her forbearance, persistence and composure are gifts to me.
Perhaps life is not an upward climb, but a spiral trajectory, looping between loss and gain, need and plenty, weakness and strength – both essential to growth and well-being.
One year later, through determination and will, Carol persuades her doctors and son to place her in a more suitable assisted living facility. Our world is set aright. My heart resounds, Hallelujah!
I am driving to Salvation Army with a backseat of boxes containing the tofu maker I’ve never used, old Yes magazines and dusty snow boots. I think of my friend Joe, on disability, unable to work. His trust fund ran out and he can no longer pay rent. He’s terrified he’ll be homeless as New York’s frigid winter approaches. Ashamed, I squirm, I’m here in Florida, grappling to shed frivolity, while Joe is scuffling to find a friend’s couch to sleep on to keep him off the icy streets.
What can I do to help him get what he needs? How can I free myself from excess, which leaves others without enough? How can we come from our separateness to share?
Excerpt of Mother Theresa’s address at the United Nations’ “International Conference on Population and Development”, held in Cairo on Sept 5 -13, 1994
It is so easy, especially during the holidays, to get caught up in buying things and entertaining ourselves. The weight of advertisements, social and familial expectations and habit draw us to do so. But, do these truly nourish us or simply distract us from what is most essential? I recently watched a DVD which reminded me of practices I feel we would do well to engage in, particularly during this time of year.
The DVD “Healing” was about the work of a humble Brazilian tailor, with a second grade education, who channels the spirits of deceased healers and saints. Its testimonies tell of healings through this man, named John of God, who takes neither fees nor credit for his work.
Images of folks waiting in line for healing deeply touched me. Individuals sought cures for cancer, heart disease and depression as they stood alone or held one another. Some walked with clubbed foot, crutches, or were pushed in wheel chairs. People were candidly present with their difficulties, pensive and anxious for release. These folks were facing themselves and the world straight on, without pretense. Watching them, I felt as if I had risen out of a rabbit hole, witness to a world turned around, where people sought and found redemption.
What impressed me most was that their healings involved hard work. Folks were assisted in remembering choices they had made that took them off course, away from the paths knew they were here to follow, ones grounded in love and peace. By rethinking their decisions and changing direction, they became whole. A woman with breast cancer talked about releasing layers of grieving over the death of her mother, enabling her to start moving forward. A gentleman with HIV gave up negative beliefs and patterns, diminishing his ego, and not only got rid of AIDS, but the reasons for it. Phoebe from Australia said she travelled the world to find out what it means to be alive. She now knows to sit, close her eyes and go inside to find out. One of John of God’s helpers pointed out that we unknowingly pollute our minds, souls and bodies with negative thoughts and actions and need to make conscious choices to be more loving, kind and understanding if we wish to become whole.
Listening, I was shed of distractions. These people were truly engaged in meaningful activities. I couldn’t help but wonder what the world would be like if we all faced our pain, self-centeredness and confusion, and transformed our negative thoughts and actions. How much of what we struggle with most would simply disappear?
During this time when we come together to celebrate the overcoming of darkness with light, what better preparation is there than to face our inner darkness with the light of love? What better activity than coming to terms with our personal histories, to rethink priorities, attitudes, and practices. And when better to do so, than during holiday vacation when we have the time to sit by ourselves or with one another, in nature and with God?
We have so much these days that it seems that the real goal is not to get and do more, but to have and do less, to create space in which to sort through things and find what is already here. Once our basic needs are met, we have higher tasks to pursue — those of caring for and sharing with one another. In so doing, we become fully alive and allow others to do the same. In contrast to the commotion we stir up with our concerns and affairs, the thought of this simple practice calms me.
The folks in the DVD are a community turned around — no longer striving outwardly for material gain and stature to find meaning, but looking within for realization of truth and cultivation of wholesome living. These are steps accessible and of benefit to all of us.
To me, this is a turning we all can make to put things in place.
‘Tis the gift to be simple
‘Tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
“Twill be in the valley of love and delight
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
‘Til by turning, turning we come ‘round right
from Simple Gifts, written by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr. in 1848
I had suspected so much, years ago, but now I am convinced. Our lifestyle has created many of the health issues we face. I have experienced this personally.
As a youngster growing up in the 70’s on Long Island, I was starved for nourishment. It wasn’t that I didn’t eat: I consumed typical meals of boxed cereal breakfasts, white bread, cold cut and iceberg lettuce lunches, boxed macaroni & cheese and hot dog dinners. I ate, but didn’t feel fed, and so I ate more. I was preoccupied with my need for nourishment, a disorder of sorts. Fortunately, at 16, I discovered the local health food store and in it, wholegrain cereals and breads, a variety of beans, organic vegetables and naturally sweetened desserts. By eating “health foods”, I felt satisfied for the first time; my cravings diminished, energy levels raised and my sense of well-being developed. Yet, I was eating on the fringe; people looked at my food with suspicion and few social situations offered food I could comfortably eat.
At the same time, I studied nutrition books. I quickly become overwhelmed by the plethora of information on vitamin and mineral requirements, recommended calorie and fat intake and salt and sugar issues. Rather than navigate this web of data, I decided to simply eat naturally. If my grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, neither would I. Since then, I have eaten natural foods, developing a sense of what best to eat at times, and continuing to feel well-nourished.
So much is like this. As a society, we tamper with nature, and individually, we suffer the effects. One by one we seek answers, often accepting diagnoses, drugs and therapies, identifying us as ill. Meanwhile, the cultural norms which create and promote our disorders remain communally embraced and largely unexamined.
In a few generations, we have abandoned lives of farming and canning, lifting and bending with the rhythms of the seasons. We have stopped living in contact with the living, breathing earth. We now push buttons, watch fast moving images, and listen to mechanized sounds, in rooms of artificial light and conditioned air, as we scramble to meet man-made schedules. How can we know of the subtle shifts between light and dark or observe the patterns of nature which might inform us? We no longer write letters nor wait for mail, chop wood nor cook food we’ve grown over fires we’ve built. Instead, we constantly respond to our phones’ jingles, always on call to meet perceived needs and hastily remove plastic coverings from processed foods to zap them in the microwave. How can we know of the passage of time or of the processes of growth and decay?
Naturally, we experience sensory overload, processing difficulty, burn out and angst. Hyperactivity, attention deficit, hypersensitivity and anxiety have markedly increased amongst youth. Born to a world of abstractions and distractions, babies receive little to grasp onto and piece together as real. Many feed on chemical formulas in place of mothers’ milkwhich promotes health, growth, immunity and development. Some bypass crawling which buildsneuropath ways critical to balance, spinal alignment, visual-spatial skills, and socio-emotional development. Intricate, manufactured plastic toys for defined purposes replace simple homemade wooden and cloth objects through which a child can feel nature’s or a human’s touch and upon which one can project his/her imagination. Hours are spent viewing TV. screens and playing video games, overloading one’s senses with illusory ideas of space and time while few woods remain, or are deemed safe enough, in which to explore the multi-faceted dimensions of the wild. We have created a world in which children are starved of what is essential to the development of healthy bodies, minds and souls and then we find complex solutions to their problems.
Without recognizing and valuing natural processes, we separate from our source and like a flower in a vase, dry up. Running on treadmills we’ve created, looking for solutions to our difficulties, won’t resolve our issues as would our simply stepping off our manmade machinery and walking on more natural paths.
As my neighbor was fixing the gutter, he complained to me about the never ending upkeep of a house. He then looked at my garden and bemoaned it as requiring a lot of work. I began to think about how we always want to get to a place where everything is set and no longer in need of effort. We feel that this would be the life.
I got to thinking, is this not death?
As a child, I had learned of this ideal. It came to me in the image of a business man sitting back with his legs up on his desk and his hands clasped behind his head. He had arrived! I had wondered, though, about the wake he left behind him: the workers whose concerns weren’t heard, the issues not addressed, the processes not kept in check. To me, this aspiration led to doom.
Yet despite feeling this way, I find the idea rooted in my thinking. I believe I should automatically know what’s going on and what to do next. I feel embarrassed when I am not up on current events being discussed and foolish when I don’t know how to respond to a student’s challenge. I don’t grasp that I am in an endless process of learning and becoming. Instead, I feel like I should already “be there” or else something is wrong and needs fixing. Being schooled in a way that recognizes only mastery conditions our minds this way.
National Geographic Explorer Dan Buettner travelled the world, finding and studying groups of people who have lived the longest. A common thread among them was that their cultures had no concept of retirement, the ultimate place of arrival for many of us. Instead, Elder folks worked and contributed in ways that they could to their families and communities. In so doing, they had a sense of worth, which fed their souls and kept their minds and bodies enlivened. Not ease, nor health care, but effort and purpose gave them longevity.
As I wash my dishes and listen to the news, it is clear to me there is no arrival, only continuous travel, or what some might call, “travail.” The hope of getting somewhere is fruitless. It is seeking for that which cannot be found. For, as we reach one destination, another appears on the horizon, in an endless cycle.
This all becomes meaningless when we focus only on our outer doings, forgetting the inner paths we are on too. While seeking to form the world to our liking, we can also become informed by it of its ways, ones that in the end are very much to our liking. In so doing, we can develop ourselves and our relationships with others and cultivate virtues like patience, kindness and understanding. These bring us the stability and peace we seek in our outer lives but cannot find there alone. This, I believe, is what Jesus was referring to when he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven within us.
Rudolph Steiner, who created Waldorf Schools, referred to this path when he said that the spiritual being develops in the world as the child does in the womb. This world is our place of spiritual gestation.
I believe that only when our inner lives are enlightened by lessons learned along life’s way can our outer works be guided by wisdom and satisfy us in the ways we truly desire. This process is not always easy, but its fruits are nourishing, enlivening and uplifting.
In the never ending flow of life, we can find meaning and fulfillment through this dance of becoming.
Growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s on burgeoning Long Island, I longed for natural and human elements. So much was being paved over with concrete and steel; so many items were being newly made with plastic and metal. I felt starved for the subtleties and vibrancy of nature.
I remember searching for tidbits of the homemade and handmade, containing the touch of another human being. My insides wrenched as family and local businesses were being squeezed out by chain stores, bringing machine-made uniformity.
Thanks to the new Cottage Industry Law, my boyfriend and I have started selling our homemade pesto. As I cut apart the labels, punch holes in them and lace hemp string through to tie them onto jars, I realize how rare an act this has become.
A generation or more of us have been raised on the standardized and mass-produced. Few feel we have the time or skills to make what we need. This domestic out-sourcing is a type of tyranny and dependence that undermines the value of our own hands, hearts and minds.
To Gandhi, the spinning wheel was the symbol of independence. I wonder what ours will be.
Taking Simple Steps 