social transformation how-to

            Do you take for granted how our culture does things and thinks about things?  In other cultures things are done differently.  Twenty-six countries worldwide have banned GMOs, the US has not.  The US is the only Western country with capital punishment.  Do you wonder?  Are you curious why values differ from one country to the next?  Maybe you have wondered about the process to change such fundamental beliefs?

            Believe it or not, it boils down to this:  it all begins with you.  Change usually does not trickle down to us mere mortals because the government changes its policies in anticipation of your desires. The other way 'round:  the government changes its policies because of pressure from somewhere, whether consumers and voters, organizations, lobbyists, or corporate donors.  Whoever screams loudest and longest gets heard.  It's a critical mass thing.

            When you want change, the first thing to do is to look at your own actions and beliefs to make sure they are aligned with the change you wish to see.  Create the change in your mind and see how affiliations around you will shift.   The organic movement for example has grown exponentially in the past twenty years because individual food awareness has grown within so many of us.  That's why such change is called grassroots.  It begins at the bottom and grows up and unfolds from there.  Fracking was banned last year in New York State because of such from-the-bottom-up momentum.    What is your vision?

music in the air

            "Soft music was playing in the background," or "through the open window she could hear the clear yet far away pling pling of a piano somewhere," are such romantic novel cliché sentences.   But music in the air does add a lot to the ambience, it's one of those quality of life things. 

            When we have people over I always have background music playing, sometimes more jazzy or bluesy, sometimes more French chanson, sometimes something else, depending on the mood and even theme of the evening.   But it's always so soft that it adds to the overall ambience and is only heard in shreds here and there through the hum of the general conversation.  When I don't have to concentrate too hard, I may put music on while I work, although that needs to be very soft classical or piano music, otherwise it distracts me. 

            Music adds festiveness to the mood and softens the atmosphere.   Music, like any art, adds to the quality and complexity of our everyday life experience.  Without music, or art in general, life is denuded, stark, plain.   To me putting on music also signals "special" since I don't have it on all the time.    You can also add the frequency argument to the conversation.  Since music is or has a frequency, and higher frequencies denote more positive emotions and moods for us, music in those higher frequencies (...not Heavy Metal or Punk Rock) contributes to our overall feeling of wellbeing.  Hence allegros are perceived as cheery and largos as composed and serious.  Hence also the reason for piping baroque music into the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City.   

super sea vegetables

             A bunch of sea vegetables a day keeps the doctor away, or something like that.  Our soils, even organic, are depleted, and eating all the fruit and vegetables in the world isn't going to give us all the minerals, trace elements and vitamins our bodies need to thrive and continually repair themselves - a measure of true health.  Sea vegetables to the rescue.  They are a highly alkaline food that improves the immune system, is anti-inflammatory, and is 10 to 20 times higher in minerals than land vegetables.  Whether kelp, nori, dulce, wakame, or various others, sea vegetables are packed with minerals, trace elements and iodine - very important.  Sprinkle them on salads or avocado, take them as supplements, cook a piece of kombu with your beans or make a broth base from a foot long piece (for miso soup for example), munch on a toasted nori sheet for snack, or eat seaweed salad.  I simply eat a teaspoon of dulse flakes each day to get my iodine and minerals.

              And then there are the sea algae superstars chlorella and spirulina.  Chlorella is basically pure chlorophyll, which rids the body of environmental toxins and helps with cell repair, meaning it heals you.  I take 5gr of chlorella a day, a good maintenance dosage (2.5-5gr/day is recommended for maintenance, 10gr/day is a healing dosage).  Spirulina is pure plant protein, much easier to absorb than animal protein, and a potent antioxidant (that means it prevents all sorts of nasty things and heals in higher dosages).  One a side note, the one thing to watch currently is residual radiation in the Pacific Ocean from the Fukujima nuclear accident.  I have not purchased Japanese nori and stick with Atlantic grown sea vegetables for now.   Also revisit an earlier post on the color of life.

the fox's secret

              You may have heard it said that we need to drop from the head to the heart, or that the mind sometimes gets in the way.  But what does that actually mean?  Antoine de St. Exupéry's The Little Prince is a philosophical chef d'oeuvre full of great quotes.  One of my favorites, the one that hangs on my fridge, is this one:  "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.  What is essential is invisible to the eye." 

            When it comes to decision making our rational-analytical mind sidesteps our feelings and decides strictly with the head, the left side of the brain, the math and science side.  It foregoes checking in with the heart.  Initially, we may believe that that's wise, and when solving a math equation it's essential.  But in many instances our heart, our feelings, provide complementary, and sometimes contradictory information to the mind, that is valuable to consider, and can be really helpful - the "seeing rightly" part of the quote.

            We can't see emotions and feelings, they are "invisible to the eye," yet they are essential to our human condition.   We have all made mind based decisions we have regretted later on because we disregarded the heart, so keep the fox's secret in mind, or rather in your heart.

the importance of rhizobia

          I'm not much of a fiction reader but I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees and enjoyed it a lot.  The story conveys what I keep saying, that life is all about relationships.  And life is all about relationships because life is about experiencing love in its many forms, as well as through its lack and absence.  The Bean Trees' metaphor for this realization is the wisteria vine, whose root system attracts rhizobia, small bugs that attract nitrogen to the roots and assure the wisteria's survival even in poor soil.  Bug and wisteria live in a mutually beneficial and interdependent relationship.  One cannot survive without the other.

            We may think that we can go it alone, get off the grid and be self-sufficient, but nature is not like that.  Nature is an entirely interdependent and mutually beneficent interrelational web of support that we humans are an integral part of.  The more we care for each other, the more we enjoy love, life and happiness. 

            We go to restaurants every once in a while and enjoy the experience.  But what we enjoy a whole lot more is having people over or going over to friends' homes and sharing good food and good conversation.  It costs a whole lot less and it cultivates relationships.   That's what it's all about.

            Read here a previous post on nature's interdependence, piranhas and the eco-mind.

what's your food worth it to you?

             One of the main issues in the organics versus conventional food conversation is that it's not cheap.  But consider that Americans spend less than 10% of their income on food (outside and at home combined), down from about 18% in 1960.  Moreover, Americans spend on average less on food than 83 other countries worldwide. 

            You wouldn't argue that a simple plastic or canvas handbag would cost a lot less than a well made leather bag.  It goes without saying that the leather bag will last for many years while the canvas or plastic bag will tear and deteriorate much faster.   Quality materials and craftsmanship cost more because we obviously value them higher.  Translate that into food and who would argue that food grown on a small farm without toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizer should cost more?   It is natural that an artisanal cheese from a small farm made in small batches costs a lot more per pound than a factory made cheddar cheese made on an assembly line in huge quantities.

            How you spend your money is a question of values and priorities.  To me nothing is more important than what I put into my body.    My life depends on it.

giddy and livid

           Our culture is not very feelings and emotions oriented.  While there are many words to express them in the English language they are mostly part of our passive vocabulary.  That means that we understand the word when we read or hear it, but don't use it actively in conversation.

            Because we live so removed from our emotions, we don't understand the purpose of them very much and are ill equipped to name them.  Feelings and emotions express themselves both physically and mentally, such as a heaviness in the chest, or a lightness of being.  Understanding not only your own, but also someone else's emotions about an event or occurrence improvs relationships tremendously.  The same event may be perceived completely differently by two people.  If the boss yells at a subordinate for submitting an assignment late the boss feels aggravated, angered, perhaps fears retribution from higher up. Depending on why the assignment was submitted late the subordinate may feel all kinds of emotions - relief at being finally finished, dissatisfied with himself for being unable to submit on time, unnerved because the assignment was hard and took longer than expected, burnt out because he was up all night.  Who knows.  Empathy and trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes always changes the perspective.  It helps to learn putting into worlds what we feel.

            Here are a few neat feeling words to say out loud, savor, reflect on their meaning, and perhaps sometime even use them.

Lousy emotional connections and compassionate communication are two previous posts on emotions.

what's it all about?

         What are some of the things you really enjoy in life?   Do you get enough of those moments?  Are you doing anything to get more of those moments?  What could you do to experience more of those moments?  Do you think you deserve more of those moments?  Would you like to live more of those moments?  What prevents you from having more of them?  Imagine what it would be like to have a life full of beautiful moments.  Go for it.

so much magic

          Your heart beats about four thousand times an hour.  Your digestive system does an amazing job digesting all the food you ingest, and distributing its energy for your use - all by itself, no assistance needed, no strategizing needed.   Your body sweats when you work out, all by itself.  Your lungs breathe, all by themselves.  Yet, we are not machines, not engines, not computers.  And some people want to tell me that there is no spirit behind it?  No purpose?  No absolutely totally amazing life-force?  No higher purpose?  In light of all that magic I simply can't subscribe to a strictly scientific-material world view.

radical tidying

            Marie Kondo's only criterion for keeping anything is whether "the item sparks joy."  Her method for uncluttering your home (and your life) has become internationally known through her book "the life-changing magic of tidying up." Kondo's approach to tidying your home promises a whole new mindset once you have gone through her radical process of ridding yourself of everything that doesn't make you feel good.  And organizing, she makes clear, cannot start until you have gotten rid of all that excess stuff.  She also promises no relapses because your mind will have shifted during this radical process.

            Take your wardrobe for example.  You probably have a bunch of items in the back of your closet you haven't worn in years but keep around because you might just sometime feel like wearing them again.  Or maybe you feel guilty about getting rid of them because you think that's wasteful (well, think consignment store).  But if you do take the time to take each piece into your hands and reflect on whether this piece of clothing makes you feel good when you wear it (Kondo's method), and the answer is a resounding "nahhh, not really," you know what to do.  Get rid of it.  Same advice goes for your books, nicknacks, pantry and everything else in your house.

            I think it's worth a try.  Although my home is not cluttered I know I keep things around that wouldn't pass muster if I asked myself that test question.  Kondo's idea behind all of this radical purging is to only surround yourself with things you love and to clear stuck and stale energy in the process, inside and out.  See this previous post on clutter inside/clutter outside.