Many things change in life. One thing that doesn't, however, is the
passage of time. Time moves steadily onward, day following day
following day. Whenever one starts something new, it feels like it
will last forever... but every time, it eventually ends.
I write this to you from the end of the most significant semester of
my life. I write this to you because your life, like mine, is finite.
I write this to you because no matter who you are or what your
situation is, you have things that you need to contribute to the
world and things that you need to experience.
As people in a mostly materialism-driven global society, what are we
going to do with the unknown amount of finite time that we have left
in our lives? Will we follow the culturally approved path for a human
being, the standard K-12 to college to graduate school to career to
retirement to death model, perhaps with a few spouses or children
thrown in for good measure? The lifespan of a person is now nearly as
predictable as the lifespan of a similar disposable product, like a
paper cup.
I am not, of course, saying that any of those things are bad.
Careers, spouses, education, and children are all potential
ingredients for a happy, satisfying life.
I
am, however, saying that we should start thinking
about what we really want out of life. Too often, the standard life
path brings with it a sense omnipresent anticipation with no real
resolution: we're always waiting for that one
thing
to happen so that we can finally be complete, finally be happy. We're
trying to get to the next grade level, to high school, to college, to
grad school, to our first real job, to a promotion, to a stable
career, to another promotion, to retirement. We're trying to find a
great spouse, trying to have kids, trying to get the kids out of the
house, trying to get our marriage back on track, trying to start a
new marriage.
We're
always waiting. We're always striving. And if we ever get to the
point where we can relax and say, “Okay. Now
I've done it. Now
I
can finally sit back and enjoy life”, it's in our twilight years.
So,
what I'm saying is simply this: it's time to become present. It's
time to realize that life, the very best part of it, is happening
now.
Whatever moment you're in, this is it. This is life. It's not waiting
around the next bend.
One of the best responses to this realization is simply to start
intentionally enjoying life more. Appreciate the beauty of the sky in
the morning. Turn off your TV and learn a new skill. Explore new
places. Spend time with your friends. Make new friends.
However,
there's a more urgent response to this realization, especially if
you're younger. Our planet is in trouble. Though
not many people realize it yet, we live in a time of great change.
One might compare it to having just pushed off from the top of a
giant water slide: you're not moving fast enough for it to be scary
yet, but you're about to be, and there's nothing that you can do to
stop it. Our world is hurtling into a period of societal,
environmental, and intellectual upheaval. This upheaval is driven by
the fact that our culture is based on the idea of endless
consumption; a consumption not matched by endless resources. In so
many ways – climate, water supply, food supply, mineral
exploitation, and others – we are pushing the limits of what is
possible with the resources that we have. Our global infrastructure
has been cracking, unnoticed, under the strain, and it is now
crashing to the ground.
Your heart is bump-bumping the rest of your life away. What are you
going to do with that life? Enjoy it, yes. But you also have a
responsibility. Whoever you are, you have a responsibility to use
some of your time to ease mankind's load on the planet. You have a
responsibility to help society transition into a period of deep
uncertainty.
If you're a potential CELL student, then the best possible way that
you could go about that is by signing up for this course. It will
teach you how to live in the moment as well as educate you about the
major issues going on across the globe. It will give you the skills,
both intellectual and practical, for you to enjoy life to the fullest
and make a real, significant change in the world.
For
everybody else, do some reading. Start with Eaarth
by Bill McKibben and Cradle
to Cradle by
Michael Braungart and William McDonough. Figure out ways to make your
own life more sustainable, and then spread your ideas outward to your
community. Be an active voice. You'll find that many of the things
that are good for the Earth are also good for your own health and
happiness. Building stronger, more connected communities is
synonymous with building more environmentally sustainable
communities. An amazing number of the world's problems can be solved
by taking a critical look at our lifestyles and changing them to
include the things that really
make us happy instead of the things that our culture tells us should
make us happy.
And no matter who you are, remember to be present in your everyday
life. After all, the present moment is all that there really is.
- Connor
Before we stepped into
the station of the recycling company in Iceland, we saw a group of birds gliding
in the sky. They changed directions all at once, creating pretty patterns
collaboratively in the smelly air with a background of giant cubic containers. Although we stood in such broken and
industrial landscape, I was amazed by the bird dance in the drizzle of that
day. This place is the home for those birds. They are the guardians of trash. I
keep thinking that the things they guard deserve a better name then “trash”.
However, it seems no one really cares the “useless” stuff that have been dumped
away.
This is one of the
major recycling companies in Iceland, located 20 miles away from the capital
Reykjavik. We learn that after recycling products were collected from
recycling bins, they would be sorted, packed up in such recycling station and
sold out oversea to the country such like Netherland or Norway. There is a global
market for processing recycling products. Following the footprints of these
usable trashes along the shipment and process, one might find out that the trip
ends in a country such as China or India. Actually that is not the whole story,
when new products are produced in China or India after using the processed
recycling materials, they can be sold back to Iceland again. 
To some extent, it sounds pretty sustainable
when people use recyclable materials in production. However, the quality of processed
recyclable materials, health issues with adding chemicals to bleach paper or
re-boil the plastic and labeling of products made of recycling materials are
questionable. Secrets are hiding in recycling products processing. However it
is not ordinary people’s responsibility to care about this last sector of
production. But to retain the value of usable materials in trashes and use them
as raw materials in production, it is our concern to ensure the quality of
recycling products if we treat those as the raw materials. One important note people need to keep in
mind is to clean the recyclable products before dumping it into a recycling
bin. Otherwise, it will discredit the
value of recycling products. The worst of all, recycling products will be transported
to landfill when they are considered to be contaminated. 
