Finding balance. Or not.

I find myself pondering how to balance two things:  1) The pull of staying in the moment and practicing gratitude, as Buddhist practice encourages, and which I’m sure is good for my mental health and 2) the imperative to take action to try and make the future better by creating change now.

The present moment is just fine for me, thank you.  I’m sheltered, well fed, in good health, and I can rest in the observation that as a society, we’ve made some very good progress over the last decades on a number of fronts.  I have the good fortune to live in a great part of the world and have access to a lot of interesting information about the environment and the living things that share the planet with me.  I am grateful for all of this. 

It often seems that if I stay in the moment, I don’t have to worry about the future, don’t have to care about the suffering that we are creating for people both now and in the future. There is no need to be uncertain about how the future will be played out, whilst also figuring out out what I should be doing. Being in the present moment and being grateful for all I have, could be a good way to escape from having to act, or worry. However, I doubt this is wise or ethical.  I’m left, then trying to negotiate a set of balances – enjoying the life I have whilst also trying to save the world! 

Taking action, however, is not a comfortable path.  I am doing things differently to others around me.  My income has dropped significantly. I’d like to see more of my family and friends.  My garden is a jungle and my house needs maintenance.  I live with a lot of uncertainty about whether I’m doing the right thing or making a difference. I also know that my efforts are never going to cut it, so its easy to want to give up now, or to work myself to a grumpy frazzle.

I have recently begun to think that balance is a fallacy and a goal one can never really attain.  The tightrope we all walk means that we will be constantly off balance and trying to regain it.    Maybe it is so with acting for the future and enjoying the now.  Walking this winding, inconsistent path successfully, probably means finding a way to hold all of it - the gratitude, curiosity, love, fear, anger, frustration, the future focus, AND the unkempt garden - in the present moment.  

The environmental crisis and short showers

Derrick Jensen writes in this article  http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/forget-shorter-showers-why-personal-change-does-not-equal-political-change/ that individual action around climate change is woefully short of what is needed.   

This might be a reason to give up on consuming less because his exhortations to become a ‘real activist’ who subverts the system might seem just too much.  

I agree with quite a lot of what he says, although I also find myself disagreeing with his title – forget shorter showers.  Actually, I think. remember them and also consider how you might do them using less energy and less water!  

It takes a lot of mindfulness and learning to really step lightly on the earth, whilst also living in today’s developed world, and I when individuals work to achieve this, they act as models for what is possible.  I, for example, was inspired by a story in the Guardian, years ago about a retired academic living in London who had worked to minimise her personal energy use.   

She walked everywhere, seldom cooked and didn’t have the hot water on.  Her area of research as an academic had been around energy and she decided that she should learn to put her knowledge into practice. 

After reading that article, I spent some time looking at my lifestyle and tracking my energy use and managed to cut it down considerably from what it had been.  I now drive my power company mad because I use about 4 -5 units of power per day summer and winter (and I work at home!).  My consumption, however is not as low as a good friend of mine who has his down to about 1 unit per day.  I do still own a car but just recently invested in an electric bike which has had no discernable effect on my power bill and which as halved my already low car running. Most of the car running I do is to carry large items needed for the community work I do.  

I don't think these things are a waste of time and I do talk about them with people as much as I am comfortable with.   I suppose an additional step would be to talk about it more and perhaps to write about it (which I've just done).  


Derek Jensen is right, though.  it is probably not enough just to do this and my reflections on some of the things I think we need to be doing will populate later posts.