What On Earth Have We Done

We're dying. While you're crossfitting and latte'ing, there are many a 25 acre glacier sliding into the ocean.

Like the Who's in Whoville, our little voices crying for help seem to fall upon deaf ears. 

What will it take. And how did we get here.

I recently read a quote that said 'The food you're eating is either making you healthier, or it's not'. 

That simple. That true. I'll extend that thought and say, our choices make the world healthier, or they don't. Our choices reach far beyond our one person. 

Far beyond.

The current state of the world, the corruption, pollution, the deforestation, the consumerism, the gluttony, the toxins in our food, the stripping of our oceans, the oblivion of the human race...it's crushing my soul, and everything that lives here. 

I'm not sure I care if you think that's dramatic. It IS dramatic. 100% dramatic.

It's dramatic because there's major drama in the world. Major.

The planet is dying, almost dead, and it's happening so rapidly, so dramatically.

If you don't believe me, open your eyes and look around. Children are born with cancer, young adults suddenly developing brain tumors, and mental disorders are now the new common cold.
Grown ups are living on pharmaceuticals, and drunk every night because there's a pervasive emptiness we're all seemingly part of, and there's barely any fish left in the ocean. Look it up.
Yet every day, people are still posting pictures of their 90 piece sushi dinners and their asses.

Wtf is going on here with our disconnect and involvement in what really matters.

It's 2017, and the general population still has zero idea about how grave the consequences of our collective actions actually are. 

They think it's a vast exaggeration. It's just some radical hippie idea. Not even close to a reality. 

They think the severity of our lives lies strictly within the outcome of a presidential election.

The world has far more than just 2 peanut heads you need to worry about, believe me.

Hundreds of millions of them, to be more specific.

If everyone really knew the dire situation we're in right now, I'd have to believe they'd reconsider so much about their lifestyles, their diets, jobs, and focus on enlightening their kids, who are the future of this planet. There'd be an overall re-prioritization.

Pretty much everything needs to be reconsidered, reevaluated, and revisited to help mitigate the crisis at hand. We need to stop watching television and behaving like we're nothing more than consumers...those who consume, consume, consume....hence, 'Consumers'. Ewww.
What a gross title we've accepted. Our excessive laundry lists of wants has put our ecosystem in a perpetual wheelchair. But somehow as long as people can still watch the next episode of Dexter, they think everything's okay. 

I drive around this little, rich bubble of a town I live in (but didnt know this when i moved up here. I saw trees and thought...'ooo everyone must be so down to earth!' ), and see dozens and dozens and dozens of people feeling the need to knock down smaller, efficient houses, and put up giant, wasteful (and fucking cookie-cutter ugly), soulless McMansions with 3 or 4 car garages. And on top of it, all the trees on the property are mowed down. :( 

The trees are the lungs of this  planet. Yet we so indiscriminately disregard their importance, and see them as 'in the way', and eliminate them without ever replacing them. Every year, we look for the biggest, healthiest evergreen we can find, one that's withstood over a hundred years of storms and geological adversity, and chainsaw it down, drag it into a filthy NYC, and prop it back up in Rockefeller Center, in the name of attracting people who would tell you that they're skating there, celebrating their love for nature, when really they are nothing more than pawns in the game of commerce as they dance and glide under the corpse of a dead tree bearing the illusion of life and all that's important.

When the earth is broken, so are we. Look around at the profound health crises in this world, and you'll understand that concept. When you dump poison in a lake, the fish and otters die. Earth is just a larger 'lake', and all it's inhabitants are too choking and decaying from it's growing toxicity and lack of giving a minor fuck.

I too, of course, am just as guilty as living excessively. No denying that. I don't live off the land, I live in Westport CT. I don't live in a wigwam, I live in a 3000 square foot house. I don't wear banana leaves for shoes, I often leave lights on when I shouldn't, and have an ancient oil burning heating system that's super inefficient and wasteful (I should have a wood burning stove or solar panels for sure). And quite honestly, I despise myself for this. Cannot imagine the level of personal degradation my body has accrued over the decades, and the level of ecological damage this planet has shit out just because of my one stupid body breathing and occupying space here. So I'm panicked when I multiply that disgust by 7 plus billion people. But mostly by how excessive, sensationalistic, and unnecessarily indulgent Americans are. Shameful, fat, unhealthy, self-centered and destructive.

We are truly an experiment gone awry.

So in a desperate and feeble attempt to make amends with the planet, and my own guilt, about a year or so ago, after learning the amount of rainforest destruction and carbon emissions that animal agriculture was singlehandedly responsible for, I decided to take on a vegan, plant-based lifestyle.

( Not to annoy the shit out of you, believe it or not. And if it does, sorry, but that's on you. I too love cheese, but fuck my tongue's opinion). Simply put, the victim angle of exclusively blaming corporations, and the powers that be, was no longer working for me.  

My choices, my purchases and my daily habits are what either keep those businesses IN business, or out of business ('my', meaning all of us...) Eating poison, buying poison, having what I thought was 'a great career' (...I guess because I could buy a bigger, cooler house, and feel worthy?... ), and never really knowing or even thinking about what the fuck was going on behind closed doors, never questioning the fallout of whom and what I was actually promoting and supporting, if I traced it back to its roots, or followed it up to it's summit.

Sadly, we're at the crossroads of what feels like an almost irreversible problem. That is, when you think of the problem in terms of needing to physically move billions of people, or hundreds of millions of people in the same direction. Presumably, why global change feels insurmountable to most, and most people shrug just their shoulders and say, 'Eh...It is what it is. ' And odd, because people definitively believe their one presidential vote has power. They understand the concept of voting when it comes to a person, but ignorantly believe it's a worthless drop in the bucket practice when it comes to everything else they choose, or don't choose.

However in actuality, a huge positive global change is relatively simple. 

It's not easy, but it's simple.

It's a matter of every 1, individual person, SIMPLY agreeing upon a few very basic, SIMPLE universal goals. Wanting to be awake and aware, (that alone has a severely positive cascading effect), wanting true health, happiness and freedom for all things, and a beautiful, thriving, healthier home, called planet Earth. 

It's imbibed in every one choice we make.

~dp