Hope Found at the Mall

My boyfriend left yesterday to spend Christmas with his family in State College, PA, leaving me all by myself in the apartment for five days.  I was so EXCITED.  Sad that he was gone, of course, but I could sit in my PJ’s while eating homemade popcorn and watching Storage Wars uninterrupted.

I am already bored.

So today I decided to get out among the people.  Take to the streets.  Be part of the crowd.  I went to the mall.  Not to buy anything, just to see the spectacle.  It is two days before the most celebrated day of the year.  Less than 30 shopping hours remain until the Big Day.  And I was able to get a parking spot right out front.

When I was a kid, I remember my parents circling aisle after aisle trying to find a good spot.  I remember people getting into shouting matches over who had their turn signals on for some random spot.

Inside the mall there were people shopping, sure, but not the crowds that I remember.  There was a line to get your photo with Santa, but people were only waiting ten minutes to get their turn.  No one shoved me or even bumped into me.  Everyone was pleasant.  I saw only one cranky kid the whole two hours that I walked around.

What happened?  I am hoping that this is because people have finally realized that the best presents that we can give one another is our time.  The environment is finally a priority.  We don’t need all of those boxes in shiny wrapping paper to make the holiday special.  This is, however, probably wishful thinking on my part.  More likely it is just the downturn in the economy.  The unemployment rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics is still 8.6%.  Even if you have managed to hold onto a job, you probably haven’t gotten any increase in pay in the last few years, and you probably had to give up a little in the way of benefits.  This means two things for Christmas shopping (or shopping in general).  One: People have less disposable income than they have had before.  Two: People are scared to spend money that they have, instead putting it away for a rainy day.

I find this comforting.  Strange, I know, but let me explain.  Even if we never change the way that we prioritize our impact on the Earth, the Earth will make itself a priority.  Just as it makes sense in tough times for families to cut back on wasteful spending, it makes sense for corporations to manage scarce resources responsibly.  The city dumps of today will be the resource mines of tomorrow.  It will become cost-effective for companies to recycle goods, pay attention to their water usage, and focus on their workforce.

This is not going to be an easy transition, and things might get worse before they get better.  There are huge costs associated with doing things a new way and it will take a push to get over that initial hill.  Think about it like the switch to EV cars.  Until there are charging stations across America, until gas is consistently 5 bucks a gallon, and until the EV vehicles have a wider range, people won’t make the switch.  And even when we get to that point, there will be a phasing in period, where people are only replacing their gas cars when they wear out.  There is no doubt that it will happen though.

I am not saying that we should just give up and let things happen as they may.  We need legislation to make pollution too costly for industry.  We need confront the issue of climate change head on; we may not have the time to let that one work itself out.  We need to address the people that will be caught up in the upheaval of changing the system.  The price of a gallon of gas rising to $5 will spur some much needed change, but it will also hurt a lot of families who are already struggling to get by.  These are our responsibilities.  My point is that there is hope for us.

Happy Holidays!

Faith vs. Science: What DNA Meant to Me

I am in the middle of reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and it has unexpectedly filled me with a profound sadness.  I am a scientist in nature.  I believe in the scientific method of figuring things out.  I have found very little room for faith in my life, or so I had thought.  So as a faithless scientist, how is it that I have come to feel so upset by this 30 year old classic in gene theory?

For the first time in my life, I have truly had to face the fact that life is not special.  That sounds as childish written out as it felt when I first figured out the cause I had this empty knot in my stomach.  The first two chapters of this best-seller are an outline of where DNA came from.  In summation,  in the big soup of chemicals that were forming on Earth in the beginning, some of the chemicals formed in a way that reproduced copies of themselves.  I do not know where I thought we came from; we evolved from single cell organisms, but I always thought that DNA was something that just happened.  I believe in the big bang and in Newton’s laws of physics and in Einstein’s theory of relativity, but I never seemed to question that life was special.  For my hard outside ‘science-first’ shell , I still had this gooey center of faith that DNA was a miracle akin to a virgin birth or water turning to wine.  As it turns out, we are all just survival machines built to keep our the little bits of chemicals we call DNA safe, not out of a sense of purpose, but because we worked out and other genes’ survival machines didn’t.

My boyfriend has tried his best to be understanding about this emotional shake up, but he is a chemist and has always seen the world in terms of energy and atoms.  He couldn’t conceal his surprise that I was really upset about this.  He used a jigsaw puzzle as an example of how he saw the state of things.  Science are the pieces that we have managed to fit together so far, and faith is what we use to fill in the parts that we still don’t have answers to.  I am not sure that I like this analogy.  It implies that there is a limited number of questions to be answered by faith or science and that faith is slowly getting squished out of the picture.  Perhaps I am too much of a romantic, but I feel better knowing that there will always be questions.  To me, God has always been in the blank spaces.  Not as a conscious parental figure micromanaging our lives, but as the questions that we still don’t have answers to.  We can all describe what gravity does to us, but to this date we don’t know what it is.  Same goes with electro-magnetic forces.  What is dark matter?  What is the universe expanding into?  Or the biggest one: Where did matter come from in the first place?  The answers to those questions are God.  I am just sad because before I read this book, “how did life start” was one of those questions.

Should I be sad that one of my questions has an answer?  Why is it that I feel farther away from God instead of closer?  In the history of human culture, science and religion weren’t always at war.  I have always wondered why religious people have shied away from science.  It seems counter-intuitive to believe in God but to not want to learn as much as possible about His most wonderful creations.  Perhaps it is the fear of this sadness that keeps them away.

 

Christmas Gifts

I am sitting in my favorite ice cream/coffee shop in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and wouldn’t you know, there are actually snowflakes falling.  I am writing about the Christmas spirit and suddenly I am overcome with it myself.  There is just something about seeing snowflakes and the smell of peppermint lattes that makes me want to sing carols and deck the halls.

Christmas is a very tenuous time of year for the earth-conscious. Between the tons of wrapping paper that gets thrown in the trash, the cost of producing and shipping all of those presents, and Christmas lights sucking up mega watts of electricity, the environment takes a big hit this time of year.  I try to do my part.  I re-use gift bags.  I serve locally sourced foods at my Christmas party.  Most importantly, I give presents that are experiences instead of things.  For example, I give my sister a gift certificate to get her nails done and my boyfriend gets tickets to a concert.

This is especially important this year.  I had the pleasure of moving (please read that as sarcasm) this year.  My new apartment is substantially smaller than the old one and to make matters worse I decided to get rid of that $100 a month storage unit that I had been keeping.  This was the year that I was going to downsize my life and my bills.  I spent weeks going through each item in the dozens of boxes that I have accumulated over my years since college, agonizing over each decision to keep, throw away, or give away.  I have always assumed that I was above pack rat tendencies.  Obviously, I was wrong.  I thought that I had some furniture and maybe 5 boxes in my storage unit.  To my surprise, it was a whole bedroom set and more like 20 boxes.  I had pots and pans and small kitchen appliances.  I had Rubbermaid bins full of childhood memories.  I had my softball and rugby equipment, even though it’s been years since I have played either sport.  The one category that I had the most in, however, was previous years Christmas presents.  These items, most of which I had never used, just sat collecting dust primarily because I had a hard time parting with them for the mere fact that they were gifts from loved ones.

This is the tricky part.  My attachment to this stuff was based on the fact that my friends and family had agonized over what to get me and then spent their hard earned money on it.  Whether or not I needed it or wanted it made no difference.  They cared about me, stressed over the decision of what to get me, and then probably spent more than they needed to on that present.  Now, I know that I am being generous in my assessment of the situation.  More likely, very stressed out family members who know nothing about what a 25 year old girl needs or wants just bought something/anything that they deemed good enough just to cross my name off of their list.  And now I am stuck feeling attached to this stuff.

I came to two conclusions from this experience.  First, that my sentimentality was costing me too much.  Not only was I committed to spend 100 bucks a month storing things that I literally never used, but I was also living in too big of an apartment.  When I moved to the smaller apartment, I had to evaluate whether each item was worth the space to store, worth carrying up the three flights of steps, and worth trying to explain to my boyfriend why I needed the closet in the spare room as well as in our bedroom.  Very little made the cut, and several car-loads made it to Goodwill.

The second conclusion that I made from all of this is that we buy too much here in the US.  This is drawn into focus now that Christmas gift-giving and door buster sales are upon us.  I won’t get into the fact that Christmas has gotten too commercial or that it is really a religious holiday.  I actually like the fact that we talk about giving, about celebrating with family, about wishing goodwill to each other.  I believe that kind of thinking should last all year long, not just at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter.  What I want to ask of you is to think about your gift giving.  Are you getting that person something just to cross off their name?  Are you spending more than you can afford because you think that you have to?  Trust me, your niece, daughter, or friend would rather get nothing than help get you into trouble financially.  If you are not sure what to get someone, please don’t be afraid of a gift card.  Personally, I am asking for gifts of experiences this year.  I would rather have a night out with my family at a restaurant than another sweater.  I know that my mom could use a day of maid service.  My favorite cousin would love to go see a Pens game.   Giving experiences makes our lives richer.  It brings us closer together.  It stops us from accumulating boxes in a storage unit.

Happy Holidays!

Welcome to Living Green Lives

Thank you for reading my blog.

The goal for Living Green Lives is to bring awareness to the issues that affect everyone.  In our country, we have a culture of “me-first” that has eroded our environment, our sense of community, and the richness that our lives are capable of.  Our children’s schools are falling apart.  Corporations are leaking poison into our air and water.  The cosmetic industry loads lotions and make-up with chemicals that are not reviewed by the FDA.  Instead of assuming something is dangerous until we prove that it is safe, we assume that everything is safe until we prove that it is dangerous at the expense of our health and out lives.   I want to raise awareness of these issues, not in an alarmist way, but in a rational way that uses a common sense approach these problems.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.  There is hope.  It will take a change of our collective attitude, which will not be easy, but we can do this as long as we do this together.