Environmental Anxiety

Yesterday I was reading about the record-breaking number of severe weather events in 2007. Today, I’ve been learning all about the bioaccumulative and neurotoxic nature of certain persistent organic pollutants. Anxiety is weighing on me like the air during a smog warning.

This environmental anxiety is not a new feeling for me. When I spent my summers researching environmental law, I found that it was more depressing that my studies on genocide and war crimes. The depression comes from the immensity of environmental problems, and the apathy of a large portion of the population. At least with genocide, there’s near-universal consensus that it shouldn’t be done.

When I told Paul yesterday that climate change was causing me anxiety, he said that he is cautiously optimistic that we’ll get ourselves out of this mess before we pass the point of no return. I am not as optimistic. I am not convinced that we haven’t already passed the point of no return, for one thing. And for another thing – I think that at this point in time, we are so far away from reversing the trend of destruction that if we haven’t reached that critical point, we’re not really doing much to ensure we don’t. I am constantly dismayed by how many educated and intelligent people don’t even recycle, if it’s going to mean walking a few extra steps. This is not the behaviour of a culture on the cusp of change.

The anxiety also arises from knowing that, even though I do more than most, I am still part of the problem more than I am part of the solution. I don’t buy wrapping paper or air-condition my house and I frequently bicycle, but I still eat meat, own a car (ok, not right now, but I did, and I will again soon), and buy cheap stuff that I don’t need at the mall. And I know that these behaviours are not sustainable, at least not at the rate we do them in North America, and people are beginning to do them in emerging economies around the world.

The sewers in Bangladesh are choked with plastic bags. There were tornados in Brooklyn yesterday. People up north are getting cancer from pesticides that were produced and used thousands of miles away. I re-use my coffee cup, but I know it’s not enough.

Zen and the Art of Closet Organization

A few of my friends have just moved, or are preparing to move. We are also in the stage of thinking to prepare to move – the plan is that sometime in the near future, we’ll get ourselves together and shop for a house with a yard.

All this packing and moving has got me thinking about STUFF. I touched on this last week a bit, when I was thinking about historical sites it led to reflections on artifacts and heirlooms. I am a person who acquires. I don’t shop too much (I don’t never shop, but it’s not a major form of recreation for me), but I shop enough, and I receive gifts, and I am a pack rat. And the stuff accumulates.

The first issue is gifts. I saw on facebook that Jazz’s birthday is coming up. Since she is a lovely girl, and a member of the extended family, I thought it’d be nice to give her a little something. We won’t be actually seeing her, but we’ll be seeing J and R, and they’ll be seeing her sometime soon, I presume. I like to mark birthdays. I have a bit of a “gift cupboard” of things that we have bought on sale or wherever to give as gifts when the moment seems right. There’s a very cute little picture frame in there that I thought would be perfect. So, I wrapped it up, and was writing a little card, when I paused. I think she’d like it, but I don’t know. And if we start giving them gifts for birthdays (something we haven’t done generally) then they might feel like they should give us gifts. Then this trend gets set, and everyone is trying to think of some token to buy every year, and we end up with more stuff. I think that I’ll just write her a card.

I try to be sensitive in my gift-giving. I have this internal war every year at Christmas between wanting to give something that I think is socially responsible or practical, and giving whatever the person actually asked for. I try to give what they asked for, because we have all received gifs that just aren’t on. There are gifts that are given with such good intent that you feel honoured to receive them, but don’t know when you’ll ever use this item. But then, there it is – and the intent is imbued in the gift, which makes it special, but it ends up being one more thing sitting on a shelf or in a drawer. So, how long do you keep it in the shelf or the drawer? When can you set the item free to someone else who might appreciate it more? I’ve been amazed by the response to some of our Freecycle posts – things that PJ received (people like to give him toys and novelty items) that he doesn’t quite know what to do with – but there are several people who are really excited about these things when we make an offer to pass them on.

The other reason I build up stuff is my pack-ratism. This comes from both an economic and an environmental conservation frame of mind. I want to keep old boxes and gift-wrap to use but somehow, without ever buying gift-wrap, I never manage to make a dent in the supply that I have. There is always more, and there is an overflowing box of it in the closet. I hate to get rid of yogourt tubs, but at the rate that we consume yogourt, we produce way more than we would ever need for a freezer full of leftovers! I don’t like to recycle paper that has a blank side and could still run through the printer – but the paper piles up. It seems like no matter how much I try to control the flow of disposable/reusable products into my house, they always come in at a greater level that I can actually reuse.
For all of these reasons, I have a lot of stuff. And I realize I’m talking about all this accumulation like it’s a bad thing, and I haven’t really explored why. I know that a lot of people think there isn’t really anything wrong with having a lot of stuff. I think that it’s good to keep the stuff under control for a variety of reasons. The first is the obvious – by bringing less stuff into our lives in the first place, we are using fewer resources and having a smaller impact on the environment. However, as I mentioned, a lot of the stuff that fills my house isn’t from us “consuming” in the usual sense of going out and buying things. Some of it is even from my desire to consume less – keep the wrapping paper so I don’t have to buy more.

Regardless of where it originates, I sometimes feel like I am buried in STUFF. I will be sitting at work, out of the house, and have the sense that a pile of papers and odds and ends is waiting to pounce on me when I go home. I really think that someone we are affected spiritually/ psychologically by being surrounded by too much clutter. I don’t know if it’s because a cluttered space leads to a cluttered mind, or what. But I do know there is a great satisfaction in doing the purge. My friends who are moving talk with glee about getting rid of all those class notes that they saved “just in case” and haven’t looked at for 5 years, and I’ve felt it in when I’ve handed off clothes, books, or CDs to someone who’s ready to put them to use.

I waver back and forth on the issue of the stuff. The “but it was a gift,” the “just in case” and the “it’d be a shame to waste it” impulses run deep in me. But then I get the urge to simplify, to declutter, and to downsize. I try to take advantages of these urges to purge, I try to actually use the things that I am carefully saving for just in case, and I try to control the amount of stuff that comes into my life. But there’s always more, and I worry that if we move to that house with a yard, we’ll just fill up the basement with gift-wrap and yogourt tubs.

out of the overflow of the heart (?)

I was looking at the “description” of my blog, right up there under the title, and I realized that the one thing that I said I was going to blog about, and haven’t, is God. This isn’t because I don’t have thoughts about God, but because I keep them somewhat guarded. My spiritual life is not something I like to talk about in polite company.

And then, sometimes, I wonder if I even have a spiritual life these days – which is why it’s weird that I’ve become a bit of a default pulpit supply at Ecclesiax . I do not regularly read the Bible, because I question its authority and have rarely found it speak to me. I do not regularly pray, because I feel like I am speaking to a wall. So, who am I to give spiritual instruction?

And yet – I do. I get up there, and I say things and they challenge people. I am the opposite of Moses, who had no words, but faith. I have the words, but the faith is sparse. And so I feel like I should use my gifts for the Church, but I feel weird, because I am so on the fringe of “the Church” and its beliefs.

I value honesty in my spiritual struggles, doubts, and beliefs (because I don’t struggle with all of my disbelief – some of it I am quite reconciled with), but I don’t want to trample the fresh faith of new believers with my cynicism and doubt. So, I speak, and I try to be honest, but sometimes I put on a doctrinal face that does not reflect my core. And I feel conflicted about that, but I keep on coming up with ideas when I am asked to cover a Sunday, because it is so easy for me to open my mouth.

Strata

Once again it's Thursday, and once again it's time to figure out if I've had any thoughts worth exploring. Well, thank goodness my thoughtful husband takes the time to comment on my blog - last week, Paul brought up historical restoration in his response to my comment on travel v. tourism. This topic seems to go hand in hand with what I was thinking about - and raises a question: what are artifacts for?

In Norway, we went to Haakon's Hall . It had been a medieval feast hall, which eventually was turned into a storehouse. At some point in the 1800s, the historical significance of the building was realized, and they set about restoring it. The "restoration" was a fanciful take on what a medieval feast hall would have been like, based more in the aesthetic and mood of the time than in actual reproduction. During WWII, the Hall was seriously damaged when a ship blew up in the harbour. So, in the 1960s, about 100 years after the original restoration it was once again restored. At that point in time, they had to decide - try to recreate what was just lost, or try to undo what was by then considered a vulgar artists rendering? The decision was for the latter, and Haakon's Hall today is supposed to look more like it did in its original form. Nobody considered giving it yet another facelift to match the thoughts and mores of the 1960s.

In the Orkneys, where there have been successive waves of civilization since the stone ago, strategic locations have been repeatedly built upon. As Paul mentioned, there was one site with 3 layers of fortification, and they were trying to figure out what to do - should they restore the first layer, or destroy the first layer to get to the older foundations? Should they just leave it as it is? Should they let tourists come and climb on the ruins, or should they cordon them off, like Stonehenge ?

In comparison to stonehenge, there are standing stones in the Orkneys ? that were mainly carried off to make fences. I look at that and i think it's a shame - but if I was a medieval farmer that wanted to keep my sheep from running off, and I didn't worship the sun, why would I leave that perfectly good builing material there? There's a fundamental tension in these questions between function and beauty, and between progress and preservation. Should we keep things because they meant something (i.e. religious symbology) to someone at some point, even if they don't mean that to us now?

This question extends beyond monuments to smaller possessions too. Should I not use the good dishes to eat off because they might break, and they were handed down from my grandparents? Do we really need to inherit a silver tea set from both sides of the family? If we did, should we use it? If we don't want to use it, should we hold onto it? As material consumption skyrockets, these questions will be more pressing for our generation than ever before. Families used to have only a few nice pieces to pass down. Paul and I already have a house full of nice stuff, and in 30 years, we could hypothetically have inherited another house or 2 worth. Are we beholden to these possessions because they belonged to someone else?

And back to buildings and sites - what is the point of restoring them? What are we trying to accomplish? To understand another way of life? To retain some aspects of that way of life in our modern world? Do these goals trump more pragmatic considerations? As we begin to realize that the level of consumption on our planet is unsustainable, should we be preserving buildings and momuments that have recyclable material, or could be adapted to a more relevant function?

Traveller or Tourist?

I have put it upon myself to be disciplined and write at least once a week. After all – I must have at least one thought a week that is worthy of fleshing out in some form. But the week is slipping away from me, so I have to get down to work, and try to get something together before today is over.

Last week, there was an article in the Globe and Mail about how the “new seven wonders of the world” are being destroyed by over-tourism. It talked about the bind that developing countries are in to exploit their sites while wanting to preserve – tourism can often be the best way to preserve ancient sites (as opposed to, say, oil and gas development . . .), but it can also do them in in the end.

So this got me thinking about travel and tourism. To me the difference is that a tourist goes somewhere to consume and experience (check off the box in the travel guide, get the picture by the landmark), while a traveller goes somewhere to experience it (move a bit slower, get to know people, get out of your comfort zone a bit).

I have always tried to be a traveller, but of course have not always succeeded. When I lived in Scotland, I spent my weekend jaunts within the country, really getting to know it, rather than rushing off on an EasyJet special for a weekend in Venice. When I was in Ecuador, we didn’t go to the Galapagos. This was partly because it would have doubled the cost of the trip, but also because I didn’t think that it was fair to tread on an incredibly fragile ecosystem when I am not a huge animal person, and would be doing it just because it’s what you do in Ecuador.

But then there’s the side of me that wants to just see things that I have always heard about, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia (mentioned in the news article as one of the spots that is being worn down in tourists). Should I not go because I would be adding to its destruction? Or, since it’s something that particularly captured me (I remember reading about it in high school French, and thought it sounded amazing), is it more acceptable for me to go there, whereas for others who are fascinated by animals, it would be acceptable to go to the Galapagos?

And deeper into that urge to be a tourist is the truth that I also have the desire to consume experiences. Where does this urge come from? It is because we think that having these experiences, which have been talked about by other people and built up in books and movies and TV, will fill something in us? Is it rooted in a general dissatisfaction with our lives, that we always want to go somewhere else to find something that will change us (the latest issue of Geez is about “finding the wonder” and a lot of the articles are about slowing down and finding the wonder right where we are)?

One of the most prominent times when we had to face this tension between wanting to be tourists and wanting to be responsible travellers was in Brazil. A big part of the reality of Brazil is the favelas (slums). Growing up the side of hills, overshadowing the luxury of life in Ipanema and the other ritzy neighbourhoods, these neighbourhoods of shacks are hotbeds of poverty and crime, and examples of the huge divide between rich and poor in Rio. If you are in Rio, you get a sense that to really understand the city, you have to understand the slums. And so, there are favela tours. You can join a group in an SUV and view the slums. Meet people who live in them. For many of these companies, the proceeds of the tour goes directly to the community. So – we were torn. Would going on the tour be a way for us to gain compassion and understanding for these people, and to give them the means to pull themselves out of this situation? Or, would it be some kind of sick human zoo experience, like when rich Victorians used to go to Bedlam to view the crazies? In the end, we didn’t feel like we had enough time and information to make an informed decision, so erred on the side of caution and didn’t go on the tour.

Where does this leave us? I wanted to go on the favela tour, but didn’t know if I should. I want to go to Angkor Wat. Should I? I want to spend 4 months travelling around the Mediterranean. If I don’t have 4 months, should I go to Greece for a week, or not go at all? I guess in planning trips, we should examine our motivation. Why am I going? Am I going to consume an experience so I can write home about it, or am I going so that I can really EXPERIENCE an experience? If we are going to consume an experience, maybe we should stay home. Or, can even that mode of travel be saved? Should tourism continue, in the hope that every now and then, someone who just wanted to snap a few pictures will unexpectedly have their life changed by a real interaction with another culture, with nature, or with herself?

Another Globe Article on the subject today:Space Travel

Beauty Myth

Submitted this for publication a while ago. Didn't get picked up. Going to post it now instead.

I’ve been biking to work, and I’ve been feeling good about that. It’s a bit longer than I used to ride to school, and I’m proud I’ve risen to the challenge. Every morning I walk into my office building in spandex shorts and a t-shirt. I was self-conscious at first about being seen in my bike gear, but I got over it. I’ve been feeling good about that too – feeling good about doing what’s right for my health and for the environment and not letting my paranoid perception that everyone is watching and judging me get in the way. I’ve been fighting the voices in my head that whisper the Beauty Myth, that tell me that my outside is more important than my inside and that a less-than-rock-hard butt and an asymmetrical face make me a less worthy human.

It gets harder to beat down the voices, though, when they are reinforced from the outside too. The other day, one of my friends had biked across town, and was doing some shopping, so she was walking down the street in her bike gear. A man roller-bladed past, and yelled “you better get a thong for that fat ass.” When I heard this story, I became self-conscious about my own spandex-clad butt, which rolls through downtown Ottawa daily. Then, I got sad and angry. I know that if I look at fashion magazines, or peer too closely at various lines on my face in the mirror, that I am inviting the voices in my head to start their nattering, but how are we supposed to fight the Beauty Myth when it attacks us, completely unprovoked? And where does this guy get off? We are in a supposedly post-feminist society, but some jerk still thinks it’s appropriate a) to yell something incredibly personal and degrading to a total stranger and b) to suggest that a woman should be wearing thong underwear with her exercise gear (with the implicit suggestion that the shorts are for him to look at, not for her to be comfortable while doing physical activity). The demons, clearly, are not all in my head.

So here I am – a modern feminist woman, and the Beauty Myth is the beast on my back, but worse, because it’s inside of me too. I want to be a dragon-slayer, but sometimes I have Stockholm Syndrome and succumb to its scaly embrace. When this happens, I need the help of people who love me to get back in the fight. I have been blessed with relationships with strong and intelligent women, each beautiful in a different way. I have men in my life who believe in me, who have never suggested I am limited in what I can achieve because I am a girl. We all stumble and get seduced by the Myth at times, but these relationships remind me of what’s important – of where my real worth and beauty come from. This is my community, these are the people who know my soul, and whose opinion I want to cherish – not some yelling drive-by creep.

When I am reminded that I am loved, it makes all the difference. I’ll continue to wear my spandex shorts. They’re good for riding, and riding makes me strong and leaves a light footprint upon the earth. I’m trying to make peace with my body, and then move beyond it. I’m made in the image of God, who is divine, and I’m called to follow Jesus, who saw to the heart of people. I want to do the same, starting with myself.

Called

So, today I was called to my profession. Between getting rear-ended on Elgin Street and having a posh lunch with family and friends, I donned the black robes and white tabs (and regulation black shoes and socks), walked across a stage, bowed a couple of times, and became a lawyer.

[Ok . . . I started this post almost a month ago . . . and now I am determined to finish it. . . .]

The call to the bar was a mixture of archaic tradition and down to earth common sense. We wore the robes and bowed. We rose when the special session of the court was opened to admit us as solicitors. We were told to look after our health and our relationships (there's something ominous about being told at your graduation that you are in a high-risk group for addictions and suicide, but it's good to have it addressed . . .). We applauded our families for supporting us through this process. We were encouraged to give of our time, and to safeguard the reputation of justice.

I went to law school because I wanted to safeguard justice, to make justice happen. I came out of the process convinced that our profession DOES have that responsibility, but that we generally have failed to take it on. People need lawyers in the crises of their lives, but most people can't afford a lawyer. We are told to safeguard justice and to work tirelessly for people in need, but we pay sky-rocketing tuition that leaves many young lawyers in too much debt to consider a low-paying career. We are also groomed to be elite, from the wine and cheese parties that the firms throw to the etiquette seminars that are offered through career services. All of these conflicting messages can leave a young lawyer wondering if we can actually make a difference.

I am now a member of a profession that has earned itself a bad reputation, but I think it is salvageable, and I hope that my career will be an example of integrity within the profession.