Ubari Oasis in Libya. Image: Wikipedia/Sfivat
Larry Plesent
Maybe you’re like me and your head is exploding from the onslaught of relentless negative media bombardment. The world is warming! Species are dying off! Atmospheric CO2 is the highest it’s been in three million years! Isn’t there anything good happening in the world anymore?
You bet there is, and, yes, there is something you can do to help turn this civilization of ours around. Each of us, all 7 billion blessed humans, creates a sphere of influence around our lives just by burning calories and being aware that we are in the world. The question of course is, what type of influence do YOU want to be in the world? If you were a metaphor, what would you want your life to stand for?
The truth is that you and your family, your friends and neighbors, all of us can do what the politicos and CEOs apparently cannot or will not do. You can be part of the solution.
I call it the Oasis Effect and each of us can be part of this growing movement to bring humanity into a more natural and sustainable civilization, one that meets our needs without eating up what is left of the natural resources of the planet that begat and sustains us.
Just as enough individual drops of rain can burst a dam, the Oasis Effect starts out as drops on the ocean of our petroleum fueled and extraction-built economy. The Oasis Effect is like a raging current sweeping away the damming limits of our ecologically disastrous ways of conducting the daily business of being human.
The Oasis Effect starts with each person making the best and most sustainable choices that can reasonably be made in that moment. One drop at a time creating a mighty river of change. An Oasis of Change in a desert of greedy habits programmed into us by nonstop media onslaught.
If you live your life as an oasis of increasingly natural and sustainable decisions, the best possible outcomes will inevitably follow. Do it for yourself, and do it for the generations to come after. But also, do it because it is fun and delicious to feel a part of nature and the enormity of creation rather than an isolated bubble-being.
Here’s to the resilience and ingenuity of Sapiens! We are not extinct yet. And where there is life there, is always hope.
Larry Plesent is a writer, philosopher and natural products formulator living and working in the Green Mountains of central Vermont. Read more at www.vermontsoap.com/category/blog/.
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