How Not to be a Zombie
When I say, "OK, let’s look at how something as simple as going to the grocery store can affect something as complex as climate change," you’re probably thinking I’m going to give you a nice little list of regional produce items and tips for consuming less plastic. And while yes, I have in fact researched these topics in tremendous depth, the first I'm going to show you in a very recognizable way how when you shop is just as important as what you buy.
Here's a scenario for you. Maybe it’ll feel all too familiar — uncomfortable even — but stay with it. That discomfort is the first step to change.
It’s Sunday night and you have a full work week ahead of you. The fridge and pantry look a little sparse and you swore this would be the week you prepared some lunches ahead of time instead of shelling out $12 for a fishbowl of plastic-tasting lettuce at Sweet Green ($15 if you want a two-ounce hospital cup of dry chicken or a sprinkle of slivered almonds). So you pack up your reusable bags and hike the six blocks over to Whole Foods.
Looks like everyone else in the 9-5 weekday work world had the exact same thought. As soon as the double doors glide open, you hit the line, snaking all the way around the store to the produce. You instinctively numb yourself to the dread and soldier on.
Two and a half hours of battling the line for your supply of California avocados, Mexican strawberries, Florida tangerines, New Zealand kiwi, Costa Rican bananas, cellophane-bagged spinach, insipid hothouse tomatoes, Indian basmati rice, Bolivian quinoa, "cage free" eggs, and Pacific Northwest salmon, you finally reach the final stretch. You can’t quite see the register station, but at least you can hear the automated fembot voice over the speaker system "now serving number 14." Maybe another half an hour you think, I can do this.
Thirty minutes later, you're still pushing an overflowing basket past the shiny packaged foods on the right and craft beer, blue corn chips and triple-decker guac on the left. You're freaking starving, a headache is creeping in, and all thought of cooking up that dal recipe you bookmarked is totally shot to hell. You look down at the salmon and avocados in your basket that require cooking and slicing, glance back up at the package of salmon-avocado sushi rolls strategically placed at eye-level, let out a sigh of defeat, and place it on top of your hard-won bulk items. Hmm, butternut squash soup, cobb salad… to your growling stomach it all looks great even though you know it will taste like sawdust. Good lord, lemme get some of these craft beers.
The PA is playing Etta James’ At Last as you reach the checkout, after loading up on a dozen sugar-laden "energy bars" your crashing blood glucose levels scream at you to buy. Your friendly cashier delivers the final blow: $136.19.
You planned on spending 80 bucks — how does this always happen?
After adding another reusable bag to the pile to fit all the excess you didn’t plan on buying, you haul your goods outside and collapse into one of the only metal chairs not chained up for the night on the “café patio” and pull out your phone to order a car. You planned on walking home but night has fallen and you have way too much to carry. Kicking a pecking pigeon off your foot, you tear the plastic wrapper off an energy bar and inhale it, barely chewing as your body’s ravenous hunger has now overtaken your mind. Brown rice syrup and date paste rush into your bloodstream as you wait for your ride, shaky and eyes glazed over.
Home at last. You toss all your produce into the crisper bin to rot, those nice little lunches you were going to prepare for the week a vague memory. You left your apartment at 6, it’s now after 9. After dumping 4 packets of tamari sauce and wasabi on your salmon rolls to make them taste like something, you mindlessly eat while scrolling through the endless stream clickbait and wannabe influencers. The night comes to a close when you fall into a fitful sleep with your phone next to your pillow. The dal you were going to make, that Mandarin course you bought on Babylon, the yoganidra recording you were looking forward to all day — those precious moments to nourish and enrich and center yourself — have all vanished into an exhausted haze because your grocery store trip didn’t go as planned.
You thought you were just going out for groceries so you could stop eating out so much — you are really trying to be part of the solution. Strangely enough, here you are with a pile of soy sauce packets and a near-tanked bank balance, unable to shake the vague sense of guilt that you might actually just be part of the problem.
You went to the store at 6pm on a Sunday night — were you hoping it would be empty?
People like to bat around academic-sounding words like "systemic,” and talk like they aren’t part of the very system they are debating, or that they are somehow immune to its effects. There is a system in place actively working against you — against all of us. Allow me to explain.
To quote a bit of history presented in a 2014 Business Insider article titled The real reason for the 40-hour work week:
“The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14 or 16-hour workdays.
As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays.
But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.”
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom.
And where are you more bored, more dissatisfied, and more susceptible to over consume than standing in line at Whole Foods?
Nourishing your body and mind is no joke. To keep the zombie-makers at bay, you have to be alert. Make it a priority, just as much or even more so than your Ashtanga practice or Barry's Bootcamp class. Carve out a time when you can shop in relative peace, buy what you need, and have some time left to prepare it. I used to wait until 9:30 pm to hit Trader Joe's on a weekday and it was heaven. Find — or make — a time that works for you. There is no I can’t — those excuses come from within yourself. Or keep reliving the same scenario until it becomes a systemic malaise — I won’t be offended.
We're all in this together. Every day has the potential to be the first day of a new world. Make a choice. Take an action. It starts with you.
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At Sueño de Vida we work in a meaningful way to heal land ravaged by deforestation. How meaningful? According to a recent UN Foresight Brief on climate change,
--It is of the utmost importance to stop deforestation and to increase reforestation efforts around the world. Agricultural practices should focus on soil building, year-round soil cover with plants and the use of agroforestry methods.
That is exactly what we do here at SdV. You can help by helping us do what we do every day: plant forests that nurture soil, people, and community.
Click HERE to donate directly to our reforestation fund OR make a monthly pledge on our Patreon.
Thank you.
Kristen Krash is the director and co-founder of Sueño de Vida, a regenerative agroforestry farm, education center, nature reserve in Ecuador’s Chocó Andino Cloudforest. Prior to moving, Kristen was known for her guerrilla gardens — productive green spaces she created in any available space. Now an urban transplant in the South American rain forest, she has adapted her urban gardening and sustainability skills to large-scale reforestation of degraded land. She takes a practical and accessible approach to helping others achieve more balance and self-sufficiency in their lives.
Kristen’s articles and interviews have been featured on popular sustainability platforms like Abundant Edge and The Mud Home, and in the Rainforest Regeneration Curriculum at the Ecological Restoration Camps.