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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Water For The Dry Sponge
Chronicles and Essays
By Shaun Brown:
The Metamorphosis of Knuckleheads
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by Shaun Brown |
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So far, we are still being given the opportunity to participate, in a good way, in our own future and the future of all living beings on our precious Mother Earth. Changing the way we treat her has mostly been brought on by actions of conscious education. I once heard someone say that we need to treat our planet as if we are guests here. That has always stuck with me. So I want to speak of good hope and talk about just a few changes, I have seen, that have made a difference.
For the nay-sayers with their constricted, fear-based attitudes, who think change isn’t possible, let us send positive thoughts for them to have the courage to change. But for now let’s leave them behind. We are strong and powerful Beings! When we ask for and receive the tools, become our compassionate selves and do what makes sense, we are given the ability to continue creating Peace on Earth; good air and good vibes.
As an example of change I remember as a kid riding in the car with my dad. Part of his ritual any time we went for a ride, especially on a road trip, was to always have a beer between his legs. As an alcoholic he always had to quench his unending thirst. When he was finished with his beer, he would just toss the can and any other trash we had in the car, out the window. You see when you drive fast and toss garbage into the forest and fields the wind makes things spread out and disappear from sight and you think no more about it.
Eventually a law was passed that stated anyone tossing anything out of the window would be fined~a hefty fine. Eventually my dad gave in and stopped that behavior only because he didn’t want to pay a hefty fine ~that would have taken resources out of his beer fund. He was so matter of fact about his tossing action that when the law came into effect my uneducated dad was angry and didn’t think the law was fair. After all there is so much land to fill and that stuff will just dissipate anyway. Really?
The drink and toss principal seemed perfectly normal. In fact I did the same thing when I became an adult. Not the toss part but the drink part. I had inherited the same allergy that made my mind go crazy anytime I drank fermented sugar. So what better way to carry on a family tradition, with the under tone of just don’t get caught, by drinking and driving. Any car ride I took was well equipped with booze. And then I got into recovery and stopped doing that. Education is grand.
I am not a dad basher, he just happened to be the roll model I had and he inherited his knucklehead concepts from the generation before him. It comes down to education really. My dad came from a farm where you worked your butt off and at the end of the day a hearty meal was served. He also believed in cooking with lots of lard, not only for the good taste but also, then, it was good for keeping on the calories. He continued the business of cooking with lard throughout his life. Finally he quit smoking and drinking when he was 65 and died of a massive heart attack at the age of 66. Perhaps Darwin was right ~survival of the fittest AND you are what you eat and drink!
As time progressed and scientists started doing the numbers and chemistry on the break down of stuff like beer cans, garbage and plastic, it became pretty apparent that we needed to rethink our ways. Could it be possible that we might eventually exhaust our resources? Maybe we should try to reuse stuff? So the word recycle was born. I’m old enough to remember what it was like before recycling became a household word. Most people pushed against it, what difference would a little trash in the garbage do to us anyway? As I said education is the key. So after awhile more and more people started, at least trying, to understand the concept of: one aluminum can at a time. BUT we also needed the State to set up some kind of plan to help us do that. Eventually they did.
A few of us started schlepping our cans to a small recycling center, usually far fetched, for just a few pennies in return. BUT the idea was that this action might change things and, at that time, it was all we had to hope for. Can we make a difference one aluminum can at a time? Sure as anything after 30 years of constant consciousness, about recycling, most of us have seen that it does. In some neighborhoods there STILL isn’t a program set up to recycle. Baby steps huh?
As far as education and shifting our behaviors to another aspect of change, there was a time when we thought the bigger the car a person drove the better they were ~the more affluent and idolized. It’s hard to believe now. My dad bought a new car every two years as a status symbol. We would usually take a trip, once a year, across the country to his home state of Texas. In my early youth cars had no air conditioning and we usually drove across the dessert at night. A canvas water bag with a rope would be filled with water and strapped to the front of the car to keep it cool. It was available in case the radiator would overheat. We would drink water only when we stopped at a café to eat. That experience really did seem like the covered wagon days. No cell phones, no bottled water or anyone around if for some reason you were in peril when crossing the Mojave. By the way, only drink bottled water in glass or have your own refillable bottle for filtered water because the plastic bottles bleed the carcinogen Dioxin into the water. Not good for your body or the planet!
One of the last trips I took with my family across the country was when I was 12. The newest, coolest, purple, 1959 Buick LeSabre, with the back end shaped like wings, was the ticket! Wow, what a ride, but the most important addition was the air conditioning. My dad wished we could have afforded a big-ass Cadillac but this purple float was his next of choice. Gas in those days was of no consequence because it was cheap and endless. There seemed to be the thought that we would never run out of anything and we could use all resources to our pleasure. And with that we zoomed across the mighty hot dessert in our big purple juggernaut~ sucking gas and staying cool.
Now we have the hybrid smaller cars, and bio-diesel fuel and as we evolve and become more educated, in the near future, we will see cars that emit no bad fumes AND are air-conditioned. Even if you like to drive a hummer, like our governor, you can have it converted into a bio-diesel burner. One evening, when I saw Gov. Schwarzenegger interviewed on TV, he said, “You can’t force people to drive smaller cars. So why don’t we just make all engines earth friendly?” Hmmm, I’m starting to like this guy more and more.
Food, as a child, was thought to be trusted. Looking back now it’s amazing that I am still alive! My dad had a garden and we were fortunate to live on four acres so that most of our food came from the garden and fruit trees. One of the practices that he used and is still used today, was to spray the crap out of the buds on all of the fruit trees to kill any pests that might harm the coming fruit. Another business that is still practiced is spraying the crap out of early garden vegetable plants. For instance my dad would sprinkle copious amounts of insecticide powder on the tomato plants. Even then the unconscious fervor of growing perfect fruit and vegetables was managed by poison. In the fall he would burn all of the garden material in the backyard along with trash, plastics, and sometimes, old tires and junk.
Today the largest populations of front lawn growers are addicted to poisons that are regularly poured on their lawns year after year. When the rain falls this product is washed into the storm drains that go directly into the river ~year after year. I went into Lowes just to buy some grass seed this spring and all I saw was stacks and stacks of special types of pesticide fertilizers. With my degree in advertising, I understand that, at least in America, a product needs to always be the newest, best, biggest, fastest, hardest, coolest thing, etc. BUT, we sometimes get dazzled by the sparkle and are not noticing the devil in the details.
We are asleep at the wheel, so to speak, while continuing to dump this stuff on the ground and spray it in the trees year after year. Bees? What bees? The laws, for the most part, have forced the municipal utilities and factories, to connect the dots between what they dump in the air and water and what they will be fined. The general public needs to wake up too. We wonder why fish are dying and are growing two heads and the like. No frogs are usually heard anymore on a warm spring day or balmy summer night. WHY? Could it be that there eggs can’t live in poison water?
As a good note to this, I will say in excitement, that when I got my SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) bill this time, it had information regarding NOT dumping poisons on things that end up in run off to the rivers. It stated that there are many ways to control pests in your yard, garden, lawn and home without polluting the water. Such as, adding beneficial insects like ladybugs. Determine your pest problem. Use non-chemical alternatives. Also, another attention was added about exactly where to bring and dispose toxic or hazardous waste materials. Yippee!! We are starting to get it!
So as the learning curve catches up to the mean we will see a change in our detached bad habits. Which brings me to the organic farmer. These renegade individuals, the visionaries, have managed to produce beautiful and healthy produce. From fruits and vegetables to cattle, chicken, buffalo, etc. for those who still eat meat. When I first started buying this type of faire it was good for me but also it was a statement to help support and promote these heroes. Now as the trickle down effect of healthy eating and why has occurred in our populations we are starting to understand. Not only if we buy clean produce do we benefit BUT the price of these come down as the farmer produces more. It also encourages other commerce to either shift and change or fade away. This is one of many ways we are speaking and acting on our future and the future for generations to come. We put our money where our mouth is and well, the rest of our surroundings too.
I remember one of my best friends making fun of me because I started using recycled toilet paper and Earth friendly laundry soap years ago. She thought how odd and fringy that was. Of course, the general population has now picked up the slack on this business, and it is common to use recycled products because it is the right thing to do. Yes my friends, lemmings can be turned around before the inevitable cliff befalls them. As I myself have been dragged to the education trough I have learned to enjoy the taste of change. Many modifications have taken place in my life, mostly for the good.
A few years back I started eating the cleanest food I could buy and grow. This year for Mothers day I bought myself a rolling composter. It is made of recycled plastic, the kind that doesn’t bleed into your compost. It was shipped to me from a company in Washington~ Envirocycle from AbundantEarth.com. God Bless the Internet! I figured instead of throwing out all of the organic materials I could recycle them. There wouldn’t be a need to buy fertilizer for my garden and yard ever again. AND I know what is in the compost.
Instead of eating from plastic yogurt cartons daily I have a yogurt maker and the containers are glass and washable. There is nothing more wonderful or creamy like real homemade yogurt at half the price. I use safe underarm deodorant, not the kind that contains harmful aluminum chemistry and ingredients we can’t pronounce. We wonder why so many women have breast cancer but we do not see that rubbing a toxic product into the armpit goes right into your lymph nodes and breast tissue. Or that bras, with wires, cut the flow of important circulation inhibiting the lymph flow in the breast. Lose the wires girls, I don’t care what size your boobs are there is a wireless bra made for you! The more educated we are the healthier we are.
I guess the benchmark for me is: If I wouldn’t eat it I wouldn’t put in or on my body and being a CMT~anyone else’s. That goes for shampoo, make-up, body soap, lotion, massage crème, nail polish, etc. All of my make-up is edible although I wouldn’t want to make it a meal. I do have my hair bleached still, but now it’s every seven weeks instead of five ~some vanity still prevails. I also use 1⁄4 cup of bleach and hot water for each load of sheets because I do run a public business. But as I am more educated I am sure that will change too. Lot’s of new products are available out there now without harmful side effects. These choices are the best of my education so far. I will always keep learning new things. We are certainly more educated now about how biology and chemistry affects our lives than ever before.
As far as each generation getting better ~we are. Because of their circumstances the generation before us struggled with lack and were more interested in just surviving. And because of them we have been more fortunate. They laid a firm and safe platform for which the boomers could learn to fly. We boomers, the first generation to feel, are still alive and well. We are changing the status quo, with the same causes of our youth, but now we have the money and power. A great lot of us belong to every environmental and activist organization there is. Did you know that Boomers are the generation that give, volunteer and donate more than any other? If you aren’t a Boomer and are reading this, consider yourself ahead of the game. You have picked up more tools than we have and cut your learning curve! Good Job!
We Boomers have also spawned feeling and thinking children. They are now becoming more balanced and whole leaders and are losing the old myopic view of self-preservation first. They are thinking WE instead of ME. And even their children, are not waiting for direction from the whole, they are the direction of the whole! Brilliant!
I think that we continue to do things unconsciously until someone comes along, that we hopefully give credibility to, that tell us of our hazardous ways and that there is a solution. All generations before us, including mine, never thought more of our actions for future consequences fifty years ago. We humans hate change so the ones that move forward toward the next paradigm are always the leaders and usually the creative types. We tag them the renegades. They are ten years plus ahead of the learning curve regarding change to action. They are Visionaries as a verb. If you are reading this you are in this category.
Our Mother Earth, our only mother, is a very forgiving Being. I have every confidence that the next generations, especially our grown children, are bringing positive, lifestyle, models finding harmony with our habitat. We older ones and the ones before us are slow to learn but the Gen X and beyond have already taken hold and moved forward in their own neosphere of communication and action. As the ridged stalwarts, resistant to change, die out so the young ones take charge and seem to be learning from the missteps and failed unconscious actions of the past. As an optimist I am so inspired and hopeful for the future. I know that even in our phases of apathy we will continue to go forward, pick up the slack and thrive because that is the metamorphosis of knuckleheads. Education IS Power!
BeWell!
Shaun brown
BeWellPublications.com
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Shaun Brown,
Author, Speaker,
Columnist
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Shaun Brown has been self employed most of her adult life. She has an AA degree in General Business and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from California State University, Sacramento, in Communications.
Her main focus of education is in advertising, promotion and production. Ms. Brown began writing music 1971 and has continued to unfold as a writer in many other directions since that time.
Her best selling book is based on the course: "Create A Successful Holistic Business." She has authored two books on the subject and is actively involved in teaching workshops in N. California. Her holistic business articles are published in several national holistic magazines, and she has a successful holistic practice in Orangevale, California.
To find out more about Shaun’s books and workshops visit her on-line at
www.BeWellPublicatons.
com.
BeWell!
Shaun Brown
BeWellPublications.com
916) 988-4322
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