Change starts with me

Photo credit: Booker T. Sessoms 2024

This weekend, I got to talking about food choices with a sustainability expert. Short version: eating consciously is complicated.

This didn’t necessarily surprise me. But it did remind me of how easily we fall into that great big comfortable rubric marked: I am a good person, so now I can relax. We do it all the time: “I don’t eat red meat, so it’s ok if I fly around the world.” “I only take public transportation, so it’s ok if I smoke.” “I only wear recycled clothing, so it’s ok if my strawberries are flown in from overseas.”

Just to be clear, I am not saying everyone should not eat red meat, fly, smoke, drive cars, eat imported food, or wear new clothes. It is true that all of those things manifestly contribute to our carbon footprint in an outsized manner. And it is equally true that many others do as well: almond milk production, plant-based “meat” and “cheese” production, cooking on a gas stove, etc.

What I am saying is that, because the conscious life is so complicated, we have a tendency to choose one thing to care about, often the thing that’s the easiest for us to do, and then ignore the rest.

But not only that: we often feel smug about it, broadcasting our conscious living choices to those around us, ignoring the other things we do that pull in the other direction. Ignoring that most societies are set up to maximize (or at the very least disregard) carbon emissions. Ignoring that this is a structural problem.

It is incredibly hard to be fully aligned. And there is nothing wrong with choosing the easiest change to make, first. There is also nothing wrong with saying, here’s a thing I just cannot do, in my personal life, even if I know it would make a difference.

The issue is our unwillingness to try to do hard things and learn through trying. The issue is looking for others to change before we do it ourselves.

That’s what I am sitting with this morning.