A more relaxed, focused orientation can do wonders for the simplicity that's called for in sustainable living. Photo: Epiclectic via Flickr.
Did you know living more sustainably naturally flows from “showing up” in life?
I discovered this while filming my upcoming documentary, GrowthBusters, when I interviewed architect-turned-author Sarah Susanka.
Susanka had come to my attention via two books she penned, The Not So Big House and The Not So Big Life.
The interview surprised me, however, and is playing a different role in the film than I’d originally intended. Susanka’s personal story resonated with me and relates beautifully to the underlying thread that will tie all films in the GrowthBusters series together.
The meaning of life
As Susanka put it, her life was on a merry-go-round.
I was living a very busy life as a pretty successful residential architect, and I was the managing partner of a firm of about 45 people. Everyday I would come home from work at 7 or 7:30, eat a bit of dinner, and then just read to tune out the rest of the day so I could calm down sufficiently to go to sleep and do the same thing the next day.
That sounds a lot like many of our lives, mine included back when I was living in the fast-lane.
For some, it might be described more honestly as a life of quiet desperation. Many in our modern society are stuck in stressful jobs with long hours, combined with a long commute to a suburban McMansion, slaves to a routine made necessary by a jumbo mortgage and other trappings of the so-called good life. Susanka now recognizes its limitations.
The American Dream, the idea of making more money, getting the bigger house and all that good stuff only satisfies to a degree and most of us these days are running up against something where we sometimes actually achieve those dreams and realize it is a hollow dream.
How she got here
Susanka says, "We’re trying to achieve our way to satisfaction, and we’ve sort of equated bigness with betterness and that isn’t the way that it really is."
Here’s where her story really got interesting:
One evening I was lying in bed reading some science fiction just to do that sort of chilling out, and it’s like something came along like a cosmic 2×4 and said, ‘Sarah, if you don’t make a change, this is how you’re going to be living for the rest of your life. Is that what you really want?’ And I knew instantly that I needed to make a big shift, that somehow I needed to find time to do that thing that was actually my real passion.
The next week she began carving out time to write. That’s what she was passionate about.
I just started writing. I didn’t even know exactly what it was going to be, but I just began. I took that first step, and this is really the key, when you take that first step – listening to what your heart wants to do – that is what the planet needs because our hearts are part of the planet.
Today, many books later, Susanka lives a satisfied, meaningful life – not the good life defined by our consumer culture, but the one defined by her heart and soul. She is writing, and speaking and leading workshops to help others reconnect with what matters.
When we start to focus on what we’re passionate about, we’re automatically vastly more present in what we’re doing. And as we’re more present in what we’re doing, we are acting sustainably, whether we know it or not.
How do we get there?
Susanka advises, “Tune in to who are you, what is it that really inspires you, and then…How do you make that the core of your life rather than what you’re told you’re supposed to make the core.”
Our hearts are absolutely connected to everything that is happening and so we can be that movement to sustainability. We have to start tuning in.
As we start to slow down a little bit, we’re actually by our very nature not then consuming as much, because we’re just more present in each thing that we do. We’re not gas guzzling. We’re not racing hither and dither to nearly the degree that we are currently in our attempt to try to find satisfaction.
It’s about more, but it’s a different kind of more.
When we think of more, just the word, we tend to think of quantities, and what I’m talking about – and what a lot of people who are really understanding that we need to make some shifts in how we’re utilizing our resources today understand – is that the moreness comes from how you engage your life.
So, in the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, “engage!”
–Dave Gardner for Transition Voice
