The Hammock Papers: Do.

29 July 2011

Do.

There has been some talk recently about individuals doing the right thing for the Earth is good, but it’s not enough. Little actions are important, but given the scale of the challenges that we now face, we all need to step up our efforts to a higher level. I tend to think of it as a “ladder of influence”. The bigger the action, the further the ripples of change will spread.

If you do nothing else, then please think about doing these:

1. Buy organic; don’t buy food that has been sprayed with poison, aka herbicide and pesticide. It’s just not a good idea. Buy local, from farmers who embrace sustainable practices. Or grow your own – if I can grow my own beansprouts on board a rowboat, then anybody with a windowsill has no excuse. Beansprouts are cheap, tasty, and pack a powerful nutritional punch.

2. Walk more, drive less – it’s good for your body and good for the planet. And good for your wallet too.

3. Never again use a “disposable” plastic object. Take your own reusable grocery bag, water bottle, and coffee cup.

4. Get active: find a local issue that means something to you – something good to support (like a communal organic garden, or a ban-the-bag campaign) or something bad to oppose (like the destruction of a woodland) – and use it as a focus to create an interest group. It doesn’t have to be a lonely experience trying to save the world – reach out to your community, and support each other.

5. Get political: find a bigger issue that concerns you, and write to your elected representative, or the head of the relevant company. Write to the local newspaper, or even a national one. Make your views known. Stand up and be counted – and urge your friends and family to do the same. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead).

6. Make time to get connected with nature. Make time to get connected to yourself. Make time to get connected to others. It’s all about connection.

7. Finally, and most importantly, spread the word. Everybody reading this blog has a part to play. You are all spreading ripples in your communities. Everything you think, say and do, declares to the world what your values are, and casts a vote for the kind of future that you want. Use your votes wisely. Your world, your children, and even your future self, will thank you for it.

Forget public relations and public service announcements – word of mouth is still the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. What you say to your neighbour will have a greater impact on him or her than anything they see in the media or online. Your words have an immediacy and a reality and a natural authority that no other form of communication can match. So how will you use your influence? What will you do to spread the good green word, to raise consciousness, inspire action, and make this world a better place?

Read the rest at Roz Savage, Ocean Rower.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL