Bill Mollison, the father of Permaculture, was awarded a Right Livelihood Award in 1981.
The Right Livelihood Award is often called the alternative Nobel Prize. It was established in 1980 "to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today".
How can we, the small people on this planet, live a Right Livelihood?
Dealing With Reality
I'm no saint. I use plastics. My kids still wear disposable nappies (I'm hanging my head in shame, but it is true). We still eat out occasionally, and we drive a car.
We make our own toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, but we still buy baby wipes. We're vegetarian but eat way too much imported chocolate, and I can't seem to shake the addiction I have to freshly squeezed juices and other luxurious foodstuffs.
We're doing the Riot For Austerity, and doing fairly well, but there's an awful lot of room for improvement.
In short, we have a long, long way to go before anyone nominates us for any great, green awardy-type things. I acknowledge my humanity and my failings - they stare me in the face when I look in the mirror every morning. I strive for excellence and achieve mediocrity.
Dealing With Failure
"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward."
- Old Chinese Proverb
But when I stop and think about who I am and what I struggle for, at least I can say I am struggling for the right things. Maybe history has it all wrong, and the heroes we should celebrate are the nameless ones who knew they would be forgotten and their deeds would not be celebrated, but they fought the good fight and did what they could even though they were as weak and useless as me.
Sure, the world will remember Bill Mollison. We will remember Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa too. And I wonder whether those people were actually quite - human.
I wonder this because being human means being able to fail, and knowing you're rubbish with just a tiny bit of success thrown in, but going on and trying again anyway, because you know what you're doing is worth doing, and that it is the right thing to do. The Mozarts and Buddhas of this world seem so far above human that I find it hard to relate. I wonder if they knew failure, or knew how mediocrity felt. Or simply knew what it feels like to be tired, and not want to bother any more.
Facing humanity
To err is human; to forgive, divine."
- Alexander Pope.
When I look at my 'Green Journey', I think of the failures rather than the successes. I think of the stuff I should be doing rather than the things I already do and the changes I have already made. I look at the path before me instead of taking time to celebrate the distance I have already come.
I cringe at the garbage we toss into landfill each week, but maybe I should take the time to remember what is no longer there, and the reductions we have already made.
But maybe I need to learn to forgive myself, even as I work to live more sustainably. Forgiveness isn't just for others - it is also for ourselves.
Perhaps we should remember that we are all in an environmental entanglement that is not of our own making. We none of us chose to be born in this society, at this time in history, with this ecological burden on our souls, if you believe in souls.
Maybe that's what Right Livelihood is all about. Maybe we all deserve a Right Livelihood Award, because we're all making changes for the better. We succeed, we fail, but what is important is the learning to forgive ourselves for the failures even as we find joy in our successes and in the successes of others.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
- Arthur O'Shaunessy, Ode
Right Livelihood is about action, and being an active participant in life, rather than a passive observer. Life is short, and now is the time to mould the world the way we want it to be.
Every choice is an act, and every choice can be shared and transmitted to others, who may reconsider their own acts and choices.
What begins as a tiny ripple in my own life may spread to create vast change across the world, if only we take the time to connect with others and share our decisions to do what we believe is right.
Moving Forward
We can all move forwards, even if we can't be Bill Mollison, or even Crunchy Chicken or Envirowoman.
- I may not be able to eliminate all plastic in my life (even Envirowoman hasn't eliminated all plastic from her life!), but I can stop buying plastic wrap, and use re-usable containers instead for my leftovers. I can also stop buying single-use serves of water, juice and soft drink - also in plastic. I can write to the companies selling the juice, water and soft drink, and demand a return to glass bottles with a refund deposit.
- I may not be able to eat a 100% local diet and grow all my own food like Linda Cockburn, but I can buy the bulk of my foods at the local Farmer's Market and save the Supermarket for bulk pasta, rice and other necessities not sold or grown locally. And my whole family can be vegetarian, cutting our global footprint dramatically.
- I can refuse to buy products that are overly packaged where at all possible, get those awful disposable nappies out of our lives once and for all (!!), and and I can write to companies that do not live up to my ethics and tell them that I expect better and will vote with my feet.
- I may not be able to spend my life helping the needy and working for charity (I do have two young children who are fairly needy, after all!), but I can be honest, caring, thoughtful, considerate of others, respectful of people who are different to me, kind and polite. And I can try to be friendly at all times - even when I feel really ratty and have had a lousy day.
- I may not be able to eat a 100% local diet and grow all my own food like Linda Cockburn, but I can buy the bulk of my foods at the local Farmer's Market and save the Supermarket for bulk pasta, rice and other necessities not sold or grown locally. And my whole family can be vegetarian, cutting our global footprint dramatically.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
- Oscar Wilde
I know I'll fail here and there. That's part of being human. But the best part of being human is attempting things we never dreamed possible and sometimes achieving them.
Right Livelihood is about being brave enough to embrace the struggle, and to share the struggle with others who fight with us. Pass on what we learn - both the good, and the bad - so that more and more of us take those small steps together, and the sound and movement of our journey is enough to shake the foundations of the earth.
6 comments:
Hi Daharja, I think you are doing tremendouosly well, and would encourage you to remember how much you have already achieved. Focus on the successes, they will slowly, like a ripple on a pond, spread into all other aspects of your life.
There's no forgiving to be done, you are on a path, that path will lead you to where you need to be, we don't travel a lifetime of lessons in 5 mins, give yourself some time woman lol
Blessings:)
I like the idea that we are practicing right livlihood - practice means we get to keep working on things, learning more and doing more. We don't have to be perfect, we just have to keep practicing.
You're going in the right direction and your blog is inspiring. You write with energy and passion and humour about saving the planet - not a small task. Be kind to yourself!
"But maybe I need to learn to forgive myself, even as I work to live more sustainably. Forgiveness isn't just for others - it is also for ourselves."
This is what I've said many times before, especially to the Riot for Austerity people who were facing the feeling of "anything less than perfect is crap". We should be conscious of these issues, we should act on these issues, but we should not agonise over these issues.
First time at your blog. Very impressed with the way your examine your failures. However I'd like to suggest that trying our best to be kind and compassionate is spreading invisible hope and joy in this world, bringing courage and change steadily but surely. Vegetarianism is also the one thing we really must do, even if we don't do anything else. We can run out of oil, but if we cut down every tree and pollute every stream by livestock production we'll be well and truly up shit creek without a paddle or a boat.
I agree with the other commentators - your blog is inspiring and you're going in the right direction. This post was one of those rare pleasant surprises on a crap saturated net.
Hi Alistair,
Vegetarianism isn't hard - it's just something people can do every day that makes a massive difference. The main problem is that there are huge lobby groups making out all vegetarians, vegans and semi-vegetarians as nutters who subsist on carrots and lettuce.
While I happen to enjoy both carrots and lettuce (in moderation, mainly in salads), the two best cooks I know are strict vegans, and the food they cook - organic, whole foods, vegan, locally sourced - would put 99% of so-called 'foodies' to shame. I long for the rare days these friends of mine come over and stay to cook dinner for our family!
Thanks for the compliment on my blog. But posts are getting rarer these days - I find that I don't generally say something unless I think it's really worth my time to say it.
Cheers,
Daharja.
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