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Baby steps toward transformation
The Last Word | by editor Tim Miejan
Have you ever done synchronistic surfing? You can be on the internet, or sitting
in front of the television or near a radio, and allow yourself to scan sites or channels
with the intention of discovering information that is surprisingly meaningful to
you.
In the early 1990s, I was exploring the land of myth and legend while on a solo tour
of Glastonbury, England. Over breakfast one morning at a retreat center, a chap told
me about his synchronistic surfing of the television, about how television can be
a mind-numbing medium, or it can be an interesting place to find things synchronistically
by channel surfing. He didn't mention it then, but it seems you can surf anything
in your outer [and even inner] world. I see the headlines now: Surf life for synchronicity!
Truth be told, wasn't that Redfield's point in The Celestine Prophesy?
But I digress. Let me get back to this afternoon. While having lunch, I tuned on
the radio and caught a bit of Air America radio [on 950 AM, Straight Talk Radio,
in the Twin Cities, and on 92.1 FM in Madison]. Al Franken was speaking to a guest
about the relationship between the environment and the economy. Al commented that
all too often it is perceived that you cannot support one without hurting the other.
The question that arose was: Isn't it more cost-effective to be environmentally aware
and prevent pollution and degradation of the planet in the first place than it is
to clean up damage done to the environment -- such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill
-- after the fact?
And what I began wondering was: How is that different than how we treat our bodies?
Isn't taking care of the environment, and living in an Earth-friendly manner, the
same as adopting a holistic approach of preventive health? Preventing a possible
problem with conscious choice.
What costs more: a lifelong diet of fruits and vegetables or a quadruple heart bypass?
What costs more: the collection of energy from the sun and wind or drilling for oil?
Bill Maher [of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO] repeats himself often, but he is
so on target about health care in this country. We poison ourselves with the food
we eat and then we are saddled with a health-care crisis. Duh! The problem isn't
with the high cost of CAT scans, but our uncompromising desire for food and drink
that makes us sick.
America is inching its way all too slowly toward the understanding that holistic
health care is much more cost-effective in the long term than a health care system
that probably spends 99 percent of its resources to respond to disease and less than
1 percent to lifestyle choices that promote wellness.
And that's where the environment and the economy come in.
We're talking here about two industries [health care and energy] that are being forced
to shift paradigms. Clearly, there will be an economic fall-out when any industry
is forced to retool itself to produce and sell new products after decades of producing
and selling something else.
Health care systems can spend more resources on the promotion of wellness, as we're
already seeing here in the Twin Cities. And likewise, the energy industry can spend
more resources on the promotion of clean energy from the sun, wind, air and sea.
In recent interviews, Cultural Creative guru Paul Ray, Ph.D., told Edge Life that
Japan has seen the light and that its manufacturers are well ahead of their American
competitors in producing environmentally safe products. As Twin Cities entrepreneur
and EarthLife columnist Kim Carlson told us this month, market demand for green products
is growing. Industry soon will be stumbling over itself to supply the need.
Positive change is happening, albeit slowly. I encourage, you, in your spare time,
to think about what you can do to promote your personal wellness and to be more friendly
to the Earth. The most each of us can do is take one step at a time.
Tim Miejan is editor of Edge Life magazine. Contact him at (651) 579-8969, toll-free
1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail editor@edgelife.net
Copyright © 2005 Tim Miejan. All rights reserved. |
March 2005 |
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