It is the great and grave irony of this age of industry and technology that what provides us with personal sustenance often erodes the sustainability of the planet. That contradiction leaves us, if we acknowledge it, with a sense of psychic discomfort and fragmentation. Reconnecting sustenance with sustainability is key not only to environmental health, but also to our own psychological well-being. To illustrate how sustenance and sustainability can connect at the scale of a single life, I offer how the search for sustainability enters my everyday. And it is a search, an exploration, far from a completed project.
Sustainability is a continuum, an incremental process of many small steps.
Some we can take by ourselves. Some we can take sooner than others. And some require a larger commitment by society and political institutions. An important starting point is understanding how personal and planetary sustainability naturally flow from one another. Rethinking work and consumption has been at the core of my own exploration toward sustainability.