1. Family matters, a lot. You can generally depend on your family. It may be as dysfunctional as any US family, but it defines who you are, what is expected of you, and who you can turn to.

After seeing this in action among my Mexican friends, I began reaching out more to my own family. I had a great phone chat with a cousin I spent a lot of time with when we were girls. I haven’t seen her in decades, but I hope to see her one of these years! I also went along with my husband when he made a business trip to California. While he went to a conference, I spent lots of time with family and old friends. Loved it.

2. You are part of the fabric of community, through your family, through your school friendships even from many decades ago, through your neighborhood, through the church whether or not you attend, and more.  Even if you leave your hometown, you will be part of the fabric, for example, people from our Mexican town tend to go to Watsonville and Santa Cruz, California, and continue the ties.

This sense of being part of a community is at the heart of why we returned to the US. We came back to a small town in Colorado where we lived for ten years before going to Mexico four years ago. It’s lovely to be reconnecting with so many old friends and acquaintances, people I missed a lot while we were gone. It really does make up for the much worse climate.

3. If you want to eat, you can expect to work. Some of the wealthy Mexicans have a sense of entitlement but overall it’s rare. Most of our Mexican friends understand from childhood that contributing is needed. You often see kids and young teenagers helping out in family restaurants, market stalls, or stores. They often have fun doing it, but even if they don’t, they are learning that they have something to give. I think this is a hard one for kids to get here in the US.

4. Frugality is a deeply ingrained habit. For one example, Rosa came once a week for about four hours to clean our house. She and I became very good friends, and part of her job became to help us with our Spanish. Despite the fact that we had a cardboard box full of old t-shirts and such to use as rags, she would always wash out the same few rags that she used until they were in shreds.

Mexicans understand that their economic system can collapse. it has done so numerous times in the memory of older adults. In the 1990s, there was quite a severe downturn. One Mexican friend of mine lost her job and her car; others pulled their kids out of private schools and postponed dental work. People helped each other out and got by.

Not everything transfers well from one culture to another, but I think these things do.

This article came from: Four Things I Learned About Simple Green Living From My Years in Mexico at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

What stuck in my mind as I went to bed was the awareness that all kinds of backroom shenanigans go on, in and out of goverment.  That’s not news, right? You knew it and I have known it since I was a teenager… I grew up in D.C. where my father was a professor of political science. Maybe I knew it before I was a teenager.

But somehow I was more bothered this time, for whatever reason. I spent all day yesterday in a funk, and finally realized after many hours that I was still upset by what Kelly had told me. Last night, when I went to bed, it was still bothering me, so I did my best to consciously let go of it, to release the thoughts that were making me feel futile, helplessly angry, and frustrated.

This morning as I woke up, I remembered a dream in which I showed a young woman how to mend her torn jeans and I was surprised at how grateful she was. Almost like a voiceover in the dream, the message was clear:

You never know what effect even your smallest kindnesses have.

This morning, I am refreshed.

This article came from: Corrupt People and Letting Your Light Shine at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

No matter how much I do for simple living or green causes, I can’t help but think of all the wasteful living that is going on everywhere, of people suffering from extreme lack of adequate facilities,  of the human propensity to have wars, of… of… of… I could go on without stopping with a list of at least 50 items. I bet you could too.

So I was seriously discouraged. I don’t know what set off this particular spell, and I am not sure it matters. I did my Qigong, I swam, I prayed, but I stayed stuck in a sense of futility. I mentioned it to a good friend in an email, and he wrote back:

Here’s what I’ve been doing to avoid being overwhelmed by the depressing news that just keeps on keepin’ on.  Yes, I stay informed because I want to know what’s happening, but I don’t read about it too much.  Just enough to know what I need to know.

And the rest of the day is spent doing positive things: helping people by email, writing articles, helping my students, etc.  I’m not bragging, just saying how powerful it is to do positive things all day long (you and Kelly do this too).  It does  something to you deep down.  It’s like “I know the world is in deep doo doo, but hey, I’m doing everything I can to help, so I am not sad.”

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life now.  And all I’ve done is follow my heart, do what I love to do (develop my natural talents), and do good things. [used by permission]

That really helped.  I’m still sad but I’m getting my zest back. This is such a beautiful world. There is so much to love.  And on we go.

Readers, do you get overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness or pointlessness? How do you deal with it?

This article came from: Facing Futility at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

But yeah… it matters.

It matters because of how I feel maybe as much as because of the actual energy quotient. There’s that inner gyroscope that shows me when I am balanced and when I am not. If I forget to take my bags to the market, I am less in harmony with the All. Somebody else might not have that connection in their personality, but I do, so it matters.

And so I’m coming back to this website, started almost three years ago, but not really anything more than a few pages till lately. Now I’m gearing up to make it one of my main on-going projects.

Do I really have anything to add to the conversations about green living, about simple living? I hope so. We’ll see. We cast longer shadows than we know. And maybe every little bit will help.

This article came from: Does Every Little Bit Help? at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

Now, thanks to Al Gore, Hurricane Katrina, and countless other people and events, more and more people are waking up to the reality that humanity has already had massive effects on the planet, effects that will continue through our lifetimes and those of the generations after us.

It can be overwhelming.

It can be maddening.

But each of us CAN do things that will make a difference to our effect on the planet. We can do them sooner or we will be forced to do them later, when our choices will be fewer.

This website about about “living simply that others may simply live” — with a green twist.

I may be angry at times, I may be very sad at times, and mostly I expect to be informative. I hope it helps you.

This article came from: Reflections on Earth Day 2008 at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.