Dancing through the examine life

This past week was super hectic for me. Many a-things in my life started to crumble, including my shins :(  Is it too early to start researching shin implants?

Last week, I also said goodbye to Wicked the Musical. We had some great times together. We sang, we danced, we defied gravity together. Unforgettable.

Now I'm back to plowing through the Quantum Wellness Cleanse book. This is a really good example of how bad I would be if I were ever an English literature major. It takes me forever to finish a book, unless it's Confessions of a Shopaholic. With this book, there's just so much to soak in with each chapter and the plot is just so slow in unfolding. When will she finally get together with eating meat again??? 

On Day 19, Kathy Freston talks about Socrates' famous quote, "the unexamined life is not worth living."

That's easy for him to say. He made a career out of going around asking the tough questions in search of wisdom and truth. It's the end of the day and my brain hurts. It would be nice to be able to ice it like I'm icing my shins. Oh yeah, I sometimes can do that with an ice cold beer.

Like Fiyero, the hunky, charming prince character in Wicked, I say [or sing]:

Why invite stress in?
Stop studying strife
And learn to live the unexamined liiiife

Dancing through life
Skimming the surface
Gliding where turf is smooooth
Life's more painless
For the brainless
Why think too hard?
When it's so soothing
Dancing through life 

And we all know what happened to Socrates because he tried to get people to think and stuff. So why not just dance through life? It would burn more calories, that's for sure.

Are you dancing through life or are you living the examined life? If you're doing both, please video tape it so we can watch it on youtube. It could go viral like this one:

I digress. I sort of already touched on why I started my own personal food consciousness so I won't go there again. [If you missed it, or just miss it, you can read it here.]

Many of us are unsatisfied with just dancing through life, because frankly, who can even compare our moves to Kate Gosselin's show stopping Papparazzi number on Dancing with the Stars?

The good news is we are in a place where we would like to see the best of ourselves and the best for others. The not-so-good news is that we don't magically get there at the end of every song and dance sequence. I know my decision not to purchase meat has not even registered on any company's or restaurant's radar. No one cares about my decisions, but if I am able to stay true to my own principles with my smaller decisions, they will eventually add up with others who are on my same wavelength.  It also helps me to keep the ideals I value in the forefront of my life rather than just an afterthought.

And why does being conscious about what we choose to eat seem like insignificant choices? When you're ready to buy your next "toy" -- digital camera, car, laptop, dog -- how many reviews do you read? How many different retail outlets and online stores do you check out to compare specs and prices? How many people do you talk to because they have experience with owning these products?

How much more do we consume food than these products that we spend so much time carefully considering the particular brand and model we introduce into our lives?

People have a right to be concerned about where their car came from and if the engine was assembled in China by the hands of migrant factory workers working exhausting hours just to send what we spend at a movie theater back home to their families at the end of the month. Let us also be connected to where our food comes from and the different people and places that are involved with its production and final packaging as all white meat chicken nuggets for the unbeatable price of 99 cents. In other words:

Basically, conscious eating entails knowing where our food comes from and what goes into making it, and choosing to eat in a way that affirms our integrity and our most basic values. That goes for everything that we consume, of course, but with food, it's far more constant (we eat at least three times a day!) and our power to make better choices is far more profound here than with anything else we consume.               -k freston

Of course, I need to admit that I don't have all the right answers as to all the food choices I should make. Heck, I don't have any answers to the bigger life choices I need to make either. However, I know there is a sense of peace in aligning what I feel is best for my mind, body and soul. I can't change the bigger things that are throwing that particular alignment out of whack at the moment, but I can choose to eat healthy and consciously so that I'm not too bloated or unsatisfied with myself when it is finally the right time for me to dance through my examined life. Cue music...

 

 I'm pretty sure I'm doing the lawn mower, always a crowd pleaser.

Day 17: 68% of Statistics are Not Real

Sometimes it's difficult to make changes and accommodations in our lives for results that may not directly impact us. When we talk about doing things for the future, it's so easy to just eff it because we're not going to be around in the future anyway. I have a pretty good feeling that my life span is going to be short. Have you seen my driving?

 

I'm a true Asian woman.

When I was in 5th grade, I remember we were asked to fundraise for a playground that was going to be built after we would no longer be students there. Why would I contribute my money, which couldn't have totaled over $5, for something I would never benefit from? No, I didn't have bad parents who didn't teach me anything about being nice. I was 10.

Thankfully, for all of our sakes, I have grown since then. It took a while but I have a feeling I'm a little different from when I was 10. Just a little, though.

I'm by no means developing into Mother Teresa or anything like that. I don't think I have the bone structure to really pull off a nun's habit.

I'd like to think I could be totally selfless and not conform to what mainstream society and media shoves in our faces every day. Like I mentioned before, I am a woman. I love shopping. Not as a social thing, I like to shop alone. I'm sometimes embarrassed about how much money I can really spend on clothes, jewelry, food and those $10 DVDs at Target.

This past year I have been more diligent about becoming more aware of how much I actually consume, not just what I eat, but all the things that I buy. I have to stop myself and ask if this is really something I need and will use for more than 3 months. Does the product have a ridiculous amount of packaging that'll just end up as more landfill? Is this a store / company / brand I want to support?

It's Saturday, so while you're folding laundry or taking a break from TBS movie marathons, watch this very informative video by Annie Leonard called The Story of Stuff.




I'm sure some of you didn't watch it. But here are some astonishing statistics about our level of consumption and waste production as Americans:

• Americans consist of 5% of the world's population, but we consume 30% of the world's resources and create 30% of the world's waste
• 99% of the products you buy now will not be used 6 months from now
• Americans watch TV and shop 3-4 times more than Europeans
• Americans produce 4.5 pounds of garbage each day
• 70 garbage cans of waste is actually produced for every one garbage can you fill at your home

Kathy Freston also talks about how wasteful the animal product industry is: 

• Animal agriculture causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world combined. 
• 760 million tons of grain are fed to chicken, pigs and cattle each year while there are 850 million people in the world who are starving
• The amount of feed it takes to create one 8-ounce steak could fill 40-50 bowls with cooked grains

If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains, for example, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off the U.S. roads. - Environmental Defense Fund

I know this is all very depressing. Especially because it's a beautiful weekend and nothing sounds better than firing up the grill in your new pair of jeggings with a diet strawberry limeade from Sonic in your hands. 

But hark! There is hope.

Annie Leonard mentions this quote by Victor LeBeau:

Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

Yes, a more conscience way of living and consuming will help slow down the rate at which our planet is falling apart and hopefully will help raise up those oppressed by the manner in which we blindly perpetuate this vicious cycle. But the 10 year old Kathy is still asking how does this affect her.

There is just something that is so sad about the notion that our spiritual satisfaction and ego satisfaction is decided upon by the things we buy.

I am totally guilty of this. I love shopping because I love the way I feel in new clothes. Why can't I love myself in the good pair of designer jeans I bought a few years ago? 

Because they're not skinny jeans...