As someone who had a “rageaholic” father, I’ve been dealing with thoughts and feelings about anger for a long time, and it really pisses me off!

Most of us “use” one of two main strategies when we’re angry – we’re repress or suppress our anger, or we release it directly at the person or thing which triggered the feeling of anger. Reminder – suppressing is consciously “stuffing” a feeling, repressing it is something that has become so familiar and habitual that we are no longer conscious of doing it at all.

Neither of these two strategies works particularly well. The most common, “socially acceptable” strategy is either suppression or repression. This will have two negative effects – first it will be debilitating, both emotionally and physically, for the one experiencing the anger. Second, it will tend to “leak” out in ways of which we are not conscious – little snide “digs” at the other person, or, more subtly, just a feeling that we project and which poisons the atmosphere. We all feel anger coming at us, whether it’s overtly expressed or not.

Plus, anger unreleased and unexpressed becomes resentment, and to quote Carrie Fisher, “Holding resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”. So, we poison ourselves with anger which is inwardly held.

This strategy can also lead to something a therapist friend of mine calls “gunnysacking”. That’s where we carry a large, imaginary emotional gunnysack around with us, and into which we put every little bit of anger we experience, while showing no outward sign of it. When the gunnysack is full, we will then use the whole thing to bludgeon the other person. This is the source of those explosions from “out of the blue” that we sometimes experience from people.

Releasing our anger without restraint is the other common response – for example, yelling at the object of our anger, or perhaps even physically lashing out. While this is often seen as “healthier” for the person who is angry, it can be extremely unpleasant and traumatic for the recipient, and even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. This is something I’m still dealing with, as a legacy of the many abusive exchanges I engaged in with my father when growing up.

Ever since the late sixties, there has been a movement within the psychological profession that has held that “getting the anger out” is helpful. But more recent research has shown this not to be true. Techniques such as deep breathing, or tensing and relaxing muscles, have been proven to be much more effective in calming angry feelings than things like primal scream therapy, or hitting a pillow.

This has always made intuitive sense to me, and now, with my study of “new thought”, it makes even more sense. I believe that one of the metaphysical laws is “what you focus on expands”. So, if you keep focusing on your anger, it’s going to keep expanding…

So, next time you get really angry, take several long, slow, deep breaths before doing anything else. I’ll be breathing along with you…

Well, I guess the silly answer is that you have to get the nun out first!

Seriously though, I’ve been struggling with this for years, and it doesn’t seem to get much easier.

I recently “attended” a teleconference about this given by the NVC Academy (http://nvctraining.com/) that I found very enlightening.

For those not aware of it, Non-Violent Communication, or NVC, is a “language” or way of communicating developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. It’s a language based on feelings, and universal human needs.

One of the biggest things I learned in the class is the fact that every habit serves to meet some need, or constellation of needs, in us. For example, one woman in the class was interested in quitting smoking. The trainer had her identify what basic human needs were met by her smoking. They were powerful – things like belonging, autonomy (from her parents when she started smoking) and relaxation.

The trainer encouraged her to identify ways in which those needs could be met in other ways. For example, the need for relaxation could be met by meditation, or breathing deeply, or some sort of exercise. The need for belonging could be met by calling a friend. Etcetera…

For me, the habit that is hardest to shift (“break” feels a bit violent to me) is the one of my morning routine. “Normally”, I would turn on my computer, make my “to do” list for the day, and launch my email program. So I immediately launch into my day of “shoulds” and “have to’s”. The emails start flooding in, and I start responding.

The problem with this for me is that I have a commitment to myself to do things that support my transition from “making a living” to living a life of meaning. That means, for example, doing things like this to support my Lifetools career, and a life of meaning – which for me, means helping people heal and grow, and disseminating what I regard as positive information.

So, if I just launch into the business tasks associated with my “day job”, I’m not keeping my commitment to myself, and I end up feeling sad and guilty, and full of regret.

So now, my new “routine” is this. First thing after breakfast, I practice my flute – even if it’s only for ten minutes. Then I write in my journal. Then I write something in my blog. So, right now (write now?) it’s Monday morning, and I’m feeling the discomfort of shifting a habit.

From working with my therapist, I know that this habit comes, essentially from trying to please my father, something which is rationally absurd, since he’s been dead for 12 years, and I had little contact with him before that. But, he lives on in my consciousness, as most of our parents live on in most of our minds. You see, the kind of work I do at the moment to “make a living” – owner of a small marketing communications business – would have brought approval from my Dad. The other work Lifetools and music (my calling)that I’m moving towards, would have not.

And here’s a confession. It’s now Thursday morning, and I skipped Tuesday and Wednesday. Slippery things, habits – there’s always the temptation to “slip into something more comfortable”.

Oh well, time to remake the commitment continue creating this new habit.

There’s a saying in “metaphysical” or “new thought” circles that goes…”When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change.”

Also, what I call “the second law of metaphysics” is the assertion that “What you focus on expands”. So, for example, if you are focusing on what you are grateful for, more of the things that engender gratitude will show up in your life. Conversely, if you’re constantly focusing on the things that aren’t working (financial struggle, for example) then more of that will show up too…

And now there’s scientific evidence that our moods also affect the way we look at things, which, by inference, means that our moods affect the things we look at, too…

A recent issue of Science Daily contained a report on a University of Toronto study provides the first direct evidence that our mood literally changes the way our visual system filters our perceptual experience — suggesting that seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.

“Good and bad moods literally change the way our visual cortex operates and how we see,” says Adam Anderson, a U of T professor of psychology. “Specifically our study shows that when in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information, while negative moods result in tunnel vision”.

The U of T team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how our visual cortex processes sensory information when in good, bad, and neutral moods. They found that donning the rose-colored glasses of a good mood is less about the color and more about the expansiveness of the view.

The researchers first showed subjects a series images designed to generate a good, bad or neutral mood. Subjects were then shown a composite image,featuring a face in the centre, surrounded by “place” images, such as a house. To focus their attention on the central image, subjects were asked to identify the gender of the person¹s face. When in a bad mood, the subjects
did not process the images of places in the surrounding background.

However, when viewing the same images in a good mood, they actually took in more information — they saw the central image of the face as well as the surrounding pictures of houses. The discovery came from looking at specific parts of the brain — the parahippocampal “place area” — that are known to process places and how this area relates to primary visual cortical responses, the first part of the cortex related to vision.

“Under positive moods, people may process a greater number of objects in their environment, which sounds like a good thing, but it also can result in distraction,” says Taylor Schmitz, a graduate student of Anderson’s and lead author of the study. “Good moods enhance the literal size of the window through which we see the world. The upside of this is that we can see things from a more global, or integrative perspective. The downside is that this can lead to distraction on critical tasks that require narrow focus, such as operating dangerous machinery or airport screening of passenger baggage. Bad moods, on the other hand, may keep us more narrowly focused, preventing us from integrating information outside of our direct attentional
focus.”

Personally, I think this is fascinating stuff. I think it also relates to the “negative spiral” effect we experience when in a bad mood.

When we’re in a bad mood, our focus is literally, and metaphorically narrower, so we’re less likely to experience anything in our periphery that could create a more positive state in us. And so the feedback loop continues. We feel bad, we think negative thoughts, we see less, and we feel bad all over again.

Also, according to Esther and Jerry Hicks, authors of the Abraham material, one of the tenets of “the law of attraction” is that the more we are able to align our vibration and our state of being with the flow of well-being constantly flowing from Source, the better we will resonate with that which we wish to attract, and thus be more “magnetic” to it.

So, what are you looking at right now? Is it making you feel better or worse?

Maybe it’s time to put on the rose-colored glasses. Hey, it couldn’t hurt…

The more I read, reflect on, and hear about spirituality, the more convinced I’m becoming that love is the core of being spiritual, or living a spiritual life.

“God is Love”. This thought/idea cuts through all the theological theorizing and gives us a simple criterion for assessing whether we are acting in a spiritual manner.

So, the question, “is this a loving act?” is a useful one to use when we hear a news item about a spiritual or religious group doing something or other. So, feeding homeless refugees may be a loving act, but beating up an abortion doctor probably isn’t. Likewise, stoning an allegedly adulterous woman under Shariah doesn’t meet the criterion of spirituality, nor do the Crusades against Muslims.

The other question I find useful is “what would love do?”. I try to remember this one, especially when I’m upset for any reason, but it’s easier said than done.

The other thing that most spiritual teachers don’t seem to talk about much is that it’s virtually impossible to feel (and thus to be) loving when we are angry, or scared. So, in my opinion, tools that help bring us back to center, or to balance, are incredibly important. These include breathing exercises, looking at the thoughts that lie behind the reaction, and physical exercise.

In the long term, however, even these tools don’t go far (or deep) enough. The source of any upset is usually some wound that we sustained (or “created”) at some time in our past – usually our early childhood. When we’re upset, this wound is triggered, and we move into fear/hurt, which usually translates into anger. So, I believe that the only way to become truly loving, in all circumstances, is to heal our inner wounds.

Easier said than done, right? Absolutely. The traditional method of doing this is to go into psychotherapy, and I have nothing against the therapeutic professions (I’m in therapy again/now, and loving it). The only problem to me (as someone who has done years of therapy) is that most of the time, it seems slow to me.

And, therapy itself is changing. Many practitioners re including new techniques and technologies into their practices which identify and heal old wounds far more quickly than the traditional forms of “talk therapy”. That’s good news for those of us who want to get on with our healing and get happier.

The bottom line is that it’s easy to be loving when we’re feeling good, and our partner, companion, colleague or friend is feeling the same way. When either of us is tired, ill, frustrated, stressed, broke, or hungry, it’s not very easy at all.

Jesus said,“Love thy neighbor as thyself”. We’ve heard it so often that I think we forget to read it or hear it accurately. It’s the “…as thyself” part that I find interesting, and which doesn’t seem to get much airtime in traditional Christianity. Self-love, or self-care, is an integral part of any spiritual practice, I believe, and Christianity is no exception. It’s virtually impossible to truly love anyone else – especially not your enemy – if you can’t love yourself.

So, let’s remember the question…”what would love do?”. It’s helpful in bringing us back to our spiritual center.

My goal is to be “in love” all the time – with myself, with my wife, with my neighbor, with life, with my enemies, and with my cats. I’m nowhere near that goal, but I’m still enjoying the journey…

Here are subject lines of a few of the (more than 500) junk emails I get every day:

“Pick an Orgasm, Anny Orgasm”

“Make your rod staying!”

“Don’t let them take your home”

“Seex Without End”

“Do you need help falling in sleep…”

“Finally, Fit Into Those “Skinny Jeans” for the Winter Season”

“Sixty min. is all it takes to earn twenty grand in thirty days”

So far, we’ve got sex, shelter, money, and appearance. Most of them fit into the two most basic levels Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

Now, spammers, however you may feel about them, don’t send out messages that don’t work. So, what this says about us is that the messages that are most likely to get a response are those which address basic needs such as sex and survival. I find this just a little discouraging. Here we are, supposedly in the middle of the greatest expansion of human consciousness in human history, and all we seem able to think of are the most basic elements of our physical existence.

Actually, I must admit, when I’m not frustrated by the sheer volume of spam I get, that I actually find them quite entertaining. And, I find reading them with a thick, fake Russian accent helps make them even more amusing – especially when the grammar seems to fit the accent – such as “Make your rod staying!”, or “Do you need help falling in sleep…”. I must admit that falling in my sleep doesn’t sound that appealing – one is likely to wake up with all sorts of minor cuts and bruises…

And, I know that judging the level of enlightenment of my fellow humans is not going to do much for me, especially when I remind myself of the maxim that “all judgment is self-judgment”. I guess, when all is said and done, if we don’t have the basic stuff covered, it’s hard to think about the higher levels of our universal needs, such as self-actualization.

What if, however, we were to turn Maslow’s pyramid on its head, and posit that the most important human needs were in fact the ones at the top? That means that we would have to have a tremendous faith in the belief that, if we put our spirituality first, the universe, or God, will take care of our other needs.

My wife, Kate, and I just attended a seminar by a noted Jesus scholar, Stephen Patterson, entitled “Jesus Unfiltered”, and one of the things he pointed out was that what Jesus talked about was some pretty uncomfortable stuff for most of us. He basically said, if you’re serious about “the kingdom of heaven on earth”, forget about the material world –give it up, and come and follow me in practicing this radical spiritual path. And, especially, don’t worry about who your peers are, because they’re going to be thieves, beggars, prostitutes and tax-collectors. Now, in first-century Judea, apparently, these were some pretty rough characters, likely to steal your purse while you’re listening to what your teacher is saying.

Hmmm…how did we get from spam to Jesus? Oh yes, the hierarchy of needs…

Well, I’m not quite ready to give up my mortgage, and our cats, and our refrigerator full of food. I do, however, want to look at what things in my world tell me about myself – and that includes Spam…

It’s a glorious day here in beautiful Sedona, Arizona, one of the first warm ones, and part of me is wondering what the heck I’m doing inside at my computer writing this post. I should be out hiking barefoot, feeling the earth under my feet!

This is the time when we all wake up with the earth, whether we feel it or not. It’s time to tune in to what Dylan Thomas called, “…the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”

I think it’s appropriate, on this earth day, to look at our relationship with the earth and the natural world. Inidigenous people all over the world have always regarded the earth as a source of nourishment — not just of our bodies, but of our spirits and our souls as well.

So, how aware are we of the rhythms and cycles of the earth, and their effect on us? The different angle of the sun’s light filtering through our windows as the world turns on its axis? The change in temperature, the different sounds as birds and other animals change their behavior with the seasons?

My take on this is that this part of being awake — or part of our mindfulness practice, if you want to put it more formally. And, I also believe that this has great implications for the earth itself. The more aware we are of our natural world, its effect on us, and our effect on it, the harder it is do do things that are environmentally harmful. It just doesn’t feel right…

There are a number of factors in the way we currently live that make it challenging for us to be in tune with the earth. The increasing technological sophistication we have (literally) at fingertips tends to keep us at a physical distance from nature. The increasing busyness of our lives means that it’s harder to take time to simply “be” in nature. And the increasing urbanization of the world’s population means that most of us are more out of touch with the earth than at any other time in our history.

There have been times when I’ve been so consumed with my thoughts, while driving around Sedona, that I will realize that I’m not even seeing the dramatic red rock country I’m driving through. This is akin to meditating, and realizing that one is lost in thought.

The other problem is that our understanding of the challenges facing the earth is not visceral enough — it’s too intellectual. Bless Al Gore for his slide show, and for the film, and, it could have been a lot more emotionally arresting, to say the least.

Photographic Artist Chris Jordan turns the statistics of consumerism into palpable (and powerful) images in his photo series. Jordan’s latest project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, seeks to make tangible statistics about our country’s consumption that involve such large numbers that they are difficult to fully fathom on the page. “Our minds are just not wired to be ableto really comprehend and make meaning of, and feel, numbers that are that huge,” Jordan explains. “I think there’s this worldwide cultural craving for a more sensible approach to our consumption.”

For example, in “Running the Numbers,” Jordan recreates George Seurat’s famous painting “Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte” using 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds. He’s got beautiful images of things like plastic bags, plastic bottles and batteries, all arranged in visually appealing ways, and masterfully shot.

It’s jaw-dropping stuff (go to http://www.chrisjordan.com/) and makes the staggering amount of waste we generate more “real” to us.

So, whatever your “schedule” today, and whatever the weather’s doing where you are, I encourage you to go outside, find a patch of earth that isn’t paved over, take off your shoes, and connect with your mother. If you think prayer makes a difference, say a prayer for the health of the earth, and for those of us who are misguidedly trashing her. I’ll join you…

OK, I know it’s just after tax day, and it’s way predictable to be writing a post on this subject right now. And, it’s something that’s on all our minds — especially with all the news on “tea parties”.

As an immigrant (33 years ago) and recent naturalized citizen of the U.S., I’ve been confused for years about why “tax” is such a dirty word in American politics. We have the lowest tax rate of any developed country, and it shows. We don’t have much decent mass transit, our education system sucks, and our infrastructure is crumbling. And, don’t get me started on health care again!

In most industrialized countries, people pay higher taxes, but they get more for it. What’s wrong with universal health care, for example? Or an efficient, wide-reaching mass transit system. There are simply some things that don’t work that well as private enterprises. Take health care, for example. in my opinion, it’s absurd to have the profit motive enter into health care, and more importantly health insurance. If I’m sick, I’m unlikely to get health insurance, because I’m no longer a good risk. If I’m too sick to work, I won’t be able to pay the premiums in any case, so I won’t have any health insurance, and I won’t be able to get any treatment. It’s really a Kafkaesque system.

Let’s look at another area where private doesn’t really work — mass transit. All other industrialized countries have realized that it’s virtually impossible to have a rail system that makes a profit. Britain discovered that the hard way. OK, British Rail wasn’t the greatest before it was privatized, but it was better than Amtrak, now it’s more expensive than driving! Plus, none of the companies can agree on who needs to maintain and repair the track.

I guess I’m saying I’d rather pay slightly higher taxes and have universal health care, a decent infrastructure, good schools, better education, and effective mass transit.

There are some things (quite a few actually) that private enterprise is just not that well suited to do. As a businessperson myself, I know this. Businesses tend to have a shorter-term focus than governments, and they exist to make a profit. The profit motive often doesn’t translate well into supplying large-scale necessary services. That’s where government comes in.

And sometimes, they can actually do a pretty decent job with our tax money. Take the case of Medicare, where the administrative costs are approximately three percent of revenue. For private health care provider organizations, the costs are roughly ten times that — about thirty percent of revenue. And we complain that our health care costs keep going up!

If you read my blog about pain a few months ago, you’ll know that I had a kidney stone in late February. Well, a few weeks ago, I finally got the bill from the healthcare organization that runs the emergency room where I got treated. Needless to say, this was almost as shocking and painful as the first sharp pangs created by the kidney stone itself! The bill was $5,700 and change – and that was just for the emergency room services – the doctor and radiologist bills were yet to come.

Now here’s the tough part for us. The “patient” responsible portion came to $4,300-odd. The reason the part we had to pay was so high was that, in our quest to have lower insurance premiums, we chose a relatively high deductible ($2,000). Nonetheless, the monthly premium for my wife Kate and I is very nearly $500.00

One item on the bill really caught my attention. I had two CAT scans – each in my lower and mid abdomen area – so that they could see where the kidney stone was, and how big it was. Each took about 5 seconds. Each was charged at $2,001. And that was just for the operator and the machine – not the radiologist who would still have to interpret the findings and send me his hefty bill! Now, I understand that emergency rooms have a higher overhead than most other hospital operations (no pun intended) and that CAT scan equipment is expensive. But, $4,002 for a total of about 15 minutes? That seems excessive to me.

It’s hard to know who to be frustrated at, really, upon reflection. I had good care at the emergency room, and they eased my pain, for which I remain grateful. I can’t blame the insurance company – confronted with these sorts of costs, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to remain profitable and provide good service to policyholders.

I guess there’s the rub – staying profitable. One of the points made in Michael Moore’s new film, “Sicko”, is that insurance companies, by their very nature, and their for-profit business model, have a disincentive to provide the best (and possibly most expensive) care to their policyholders. I think, along with many other advocates of socialized medicine, that we should take the entire profit equation out of the healthcare “industry”.

What’s interesting is that socialized medicine is already working quite well in this country. And by well, I mean efficiently and cost-effectively. One of the points often made by foes of a “single-payer” (i.e. government) health care system is that it would create huge, inefficient government bureaucracies. Well, Medicare is a huge government bureaucracy, but it’s a very efficient one, surprisingly. Medicare spends between 2 and 3 percent of its budget on administration, compared with the 15 to 30 percent spent by insurance companies and HMOs.

Kate and I had an interesting experience two years ago. She had a brain hemmorrhage, and it was subsequently suspected that she had anomaly in the blood vessels of her brain. Needless to say, we were a more than a little freaked out about this. At the time, she still had COBRA from a job she had left, so we thought we were all set. Then, our neurologist strongly recommended that she have a cerebral angiogram, being the procedure that creates the clearest picture of the brain. The estimated cost was $11,000, and we discovered that her insurance would only pay 50% — leaving us to pay a whopping $5,500 for the procedure.

Since Kate is a Canadian citizen, and we were due to visit B.C. on vacation that summer, I went online, and found the head of neuroradiology at Vancouver General, one of Canada’s top teaching hospitals. I emailed him and asked him if we could have the procedure done there. He emailed back in the affirmative, and got me in touch with the people at the hospital who could give us an estimate of cost. A few days later, we had the estimate – $2,200 Canadian.

Long story short, Kate had a cerebral angiogram in Vancouver, by one of the best-qualified people in North America, for 20% of what it would have cost in the U.S. We found the hospital staff, professional, friendly, warm and competent.

Here’s another surprising follow-up to this incident. The estimate that the doctor had the administrative staff prepare was for 4 images of the brain. When he was in the midst of the procedure, he decided it would be a good idea to take some more pictures, so we ended up with 11 in all!

Imagine our surprise when we got a phone call from the hospital after returning home to say that, because of the extra images taken, we owed them another $2,500!

I emailed the doctor, saying that we were surprised at this, and would have a hard time paying it. He emailed back saying, don’t worry about it – he’d talk to the administrative people, and we wouldn’t have to pay anything more than we already had.

There are three things that are interesting to me about this episode. First is the fact that it was up to the doctor to make a choice, in the middle of a procedure, to take more shots than he had originally thought he would. My guess is that here, after a procedure had been pre-approved by an insurance company, doctors in the U.S. would think twice about doing more than initially authorized. Second, he didn’t even think of mentioning it to me while I was there with Kate during the procedure, since folks in Canada don’t pay based on a strict listing of what was done. Finally, it was amazing that the doctor had the authority to simply cancel the charges. In almost any medical facility here, that would not be the case.

While Kate was recovering from the procedure she was in a large ward, with cubicles/recovery rooms separated by curtains. Not very private, so we couldn’t help overhearing a conversation across the way. A man was being told that he really needed to have heart surgery, according to his cardiologist, and that he and his family should let the doctors know their decision as soon as possible. What was remarkable about this conversation to us, as U.S. residents, was that the issue of money was not mentioned once.

Since I started writing this blog, we just received word from our insurance company that they need to raise the premiums from $487 per month for the two of us, to $643! And that’s with, (no surprise) a cut in benefits.

Maybe it’s time to move to Canada!

We all do it – most of us at least three times a day. Eat, that is. And there’s probably more angst about this bodily function in the developed world than almost any other subject – except possibly sex.

Becoming more mindful about our choices, and the consequences of those choices, inevitably brings us to a desire for greater understanding about food – how it affects our bodies, our minds, and our world.

I’ve currently involved with three books on the subject which are eye-opening (and sometimes jaw-dropping). First, I recently read Michael Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, in which he delves deeply into the origins of four different meals. My wife Kate is now reading it, and we’re discussing it. I could write about this book for hours, but I’d rather just recommend that you read it. It’s one of those books I want to buy cases of to send to everyone I know. The central understanding I got from it is not new for me – that our current, mainstream system of food production, distribution and marketing is deeply screwed up. What was new for me was an understanding of just how deeply and weirdly screwed up it really is.

Let me say here that Michael Pollan is, in my opinion, one of the best non-fiction writers of our modern age. Funny, friendly, wise, human – and a superb craftsman. I wholeheartedly recommend anything he has written – including his landmark 2001 book, “The Botany of Desire”.

A book I’ve been delving in and out of for a few years now is Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions”. This a book which builds on the work of a dentist, Weston Price, who in the 1930s traveled the world researching the diets of so called “primitive” people, who, before they started eating a more “westernized” or European diet, enjoyed almost perfect health. The results may surprise you – they certainly challenge the current orthodoxy about what is “healthy” eating – and they make a lot of sense to me.

Finally, I’m currently reading the latest book by another of my favorite writers – Barbara Kingsolver. Her “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” covers a lot of the same ground as Michael Pollan’s does, in the form of a sort of journal about a commitment to eat only food from her county for a full year. I’m happy to say that this book is currently on the New York Times bestseller list. I’m also happy to notice that the “think globally, eat locally” approach espoused by Kingsolver and others is attracting a growing following. She and Pollan point out that foods that travel a long distance to get to your plate consume anywhere from 7 to 87 calories of energy (mostly in burned fossil fuels) for each calorie that actually reaches your mouth! It’s time to go to the farmer’s market, if you have one, or better yet, start growing your own, dude…

I’ve long been a fan of Paul Hawken — his book “The Ecology of Commerce” is my favorite book on the environment. He has a new book out now — Blessed Unrest — and in the course of promoting it he did an interview in Ode magazine (www.odemagazine.com). Here goes:

Question: All of us feel overwhelmed by the bad news from time to time. What recipe do you offer to find the hope that will carry us forward?

Answer:

“Gather your friends, go to the farmer’s market, collect the local gifts nurtured by the heroes of our land, create a magnificent meal, invite people you don’t know, take a long time to eat and truly taste every morsel. Describe it out loud. Make sure there is at least one song between every course, and giggling children. Revel in mystery and what you are experiencing. Know that taste is how we know the land, change the world, and transform ourselves. While we are losing the living world, it is vital that we celebrate the living world and support those who do the same. Sharing blessings of local food with those we love conforms perfectly to the Kantian imperative: What if everybody did it? What if we did it often? What if we did it every day? What world would we be living in? There is no need for hope then. We are the world we imagine.”