In so many ways, trying to be green appears to come back to this: do I do the best for myself and my family - or do I try to do my tiny bit to make things better for the world (even though I know my contribution will have infinitissimal effect)? Like travelling: I would love to take my kids to all the extraordinary, wonderful places I've been - and more. Having those experiences has made me who I am, broadened my emotional and moral as well as physical horizons. Seeing and learning about different cultures has made me aware that ours is not the only way to be, that what seems right for us is not always appropriate for a Madagascan or Indonesian, for existence.
By not flying (theoretically), we are denying those opportunities to our children. How will they suffer as a result?
We were talking about this the other day when my sister asked whether 'martyring' ourselves (ie not flying whenever and wherever we want) makes people react the other way (our family have a strong streak of perversity)? I replied that it wasn't about martyrdom, but about acting according to our conscience. Even to me that sounded priggish. But it's also true. I feel as if I've breasted the watershed, and instead of wanting more stuff, I now want to give it back. An essay I was reading (the introduction to "Do Good Lives Have to cost the Earth?), tried to define happiness, particularly its relationship to money. It found that, over a certain level (about $15,000 pa) there was no correlation. None at all. Although this is inevitably complicated by factors such as expectations, it still makes increasing sense to me. We don't need more stuff to make us happy. We've been conditioned to think we do - thanks Maggie, Coca Cola, Vogue etc. - but it's a load of bollocks.
We've got to realign our expectations, rethink what it is that makes us happy. The same essay suggested that, beyond enough money to satisfy our basic needs, the important vectors to happiness are time and giving something back - helping others. One of the best evenings I had last year was when Mark and I took a couple of beers and walked up the Downs to watch the sunset. It beat the premiere of Casino Royale, dinner at the Dorchester, pretty much everything.
Today, I got inordinate pleasure from planting out the spinach, baking baguettes. The kids loved our 'Night Off' last week, when we switched off the mains, and ate and bathed and read stories by candlelight. We laughed more, stressed less. We were making a tiny difference, but it was more fun than computers and noise and television. I had forgotten how seductive the sound of silence could be.
So maybe the premise is wrong? Perhaps we can do good for the individual and the greater good simultaneously? Perhaps my children won't suffer by not flying to Bogata. Or maybe we'll go by boat.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I couldn't agree more with the importance of time vs. money for happiness (over a certain level, of course, which may depend upon the place one lives).
About children, I don't think they need to travel. They need to dream, most of all. This is pretty much all I did during my own childhood: dreaming in the museums about the exotic artifacts, dreaming about the sceneries and adventures seen in the movies, dreaming about the stories my grandfather told me... I didn't travel before my 20s, but then I knew why (and how) I wanted to travel.
I'd like to give up the plane... Really, I hate being treated like cattle in airports and would love finding alternatives, but I'd need considerably more time for this, and I'm not a student any more. But I prefer train over plain as long as the train journey lasts less than one day, and the price is OK (because train / boat is often really, really more expensive than plane).
Post a Comment