Last week, when I was volunteering at Hayes Valley Farm, a fellow volunteer recommended that I should watch Van Jones' TED Talk. I'm glad I did.
Van Jones is an activist dedicated to environmentalism and social justice. "Green Jobs" as he advocated, should be sustainable to the environment, and also able to lift people out of poverty. His main idea of his twelve minute talk was critiquing the idea of disposable. When we think things are disposable, we neglect to think who created them or where these things go after disposal; out of sight, out of mind. And often in this situation, the poor's livelihood, environment, and health are being exploited. For instance, poor people work in factories that create cheap plastic water bottles, and they also live next to the landfill where these bottles are buried. That was a simplified example to demonstrate a point, not a fact, but you get his idea; saving the environment and the struggle for social justice goes hand in hand.
12 minutes is only enough to explain a rough idea, but it is truly inspirational
http://www.ted.com/talks/van_jones_the_economic_injustice_of_plastic.html
As you can imagine, stars started shooting out of my eyes after I watched that video. I get excited and started babbling what I heard to Ming. He seemed genuinely interested and asked, "That's a great idea, but how do you implement it?" Do you have to rain on my parade like that? The same thing happened a couple of days ago when I was networking for green jobs, "I want to work for an organization where my strengths can address their needs." "What are your strengths?" Do you have to boomerang me like that? I thought what I said was very impressive already. I have much to learn and grow in every way, but not in dreaming. It is great to dream, of a better world, with better resource distribution, better governments, better education and understanding on differences...
Eventually, I answered Ming's question. "The least we could do is start on the small things, stop thinking that things are disposable. It's the small things that drive big changes right?" What a noble thing to say! Events that happened in the next 12 hours truly humbled me and made me realize what living a dream entails.
Our lamp broke. The screw that connects the metal base and the pipe snapped when Ming tried to move it in the afternoon. He bought the lamp years ago from Ikea and it has served him well. I looked at the lamp for two seconds thinking we can either donate it (would goodwill take that?) or recycle it. Ming however took the broken screw out and later that day went to the hardware store to find a replacement. It took a while, and because he could not find the right size of screws he had to file the new one down with a metal file on our balcony. But he fixed our lamp! And I all I did was stand aside and watch.
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| I rarely go into a hardware store, I have no idea there are so many different screws |
Throughout the day he proceeded to fix more things around the house, and we also moved furniture in and out of the car to take home, and I realized I'm pretty useless! In school I worked hard, I read a lot, I wrote many papers, and I used a lot of my time to think, what is my dream? And when it comes to living the dream, I'm back to where I started. I'm glad Ming knew how to fix that lamp and that we get to keep it. And I'm glad he showed me that having a dream doesn't mean you are living it. I'm not implying that I would start an apprenticeship with an electrician and learn how to fix things. But at least next time when something breaks, I would not think that disposing it is the first option. I think I would go ask someone whose handy on things for advice.
I hope the worm bin is coming along well. You should give it a name.
ReplyDeleteI'm writing this without a complete understanding of your lamp fixing analogy and whether you were being more conceptual than I could digest (as always). I just wanted to say that, on the contrary, maybe it was because of the need to embrace frugality and how I was brought up, I always start with fixing broken stuff first and only discard it if it proves to be of no future use. To me, fixing broken "things" or saving its parts to be used in my future "fixing" is recycling, although I wasn't labeling my habit as one.
I found it a surprise that this re-use revelation is new to you. I thought everyone fixes and reuses things. But well, in the U.S. fixing things need a bigger incentive because buying a replacement might be cheaper and less time consuming - as time is "kinda" the new currency (at least for those who can convert it to $$$).
By the way, while doing research on scholarship opportunities at SOAS, I learned about a type of grant that funds food anthropologists at the university. I don't recall the exact name but I can look it up if you're interested. It's only for programs in the U.K. though.
Fixing? Most of my past fixings only involved super glue... it's sad, I seem to live with things when they're broken than actually thinking of fixing it. When a handle of my pot broke, I kept using it without the handle... until Ming screwed back in 20 seconds. I was like... I didn't know you can do that. I was SO proud of myself when I changed the lightbulbs in East Harrison! Hehe, long way to go before I can fix anything. I just spent 20 minutes pressing various buttons on the remote control and FINALLY the TV worked... 1 for Elaine :)
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