My So-Called Sustainable Life

As I was unpacking from my move earlier this year, I looked around at all of my belongings and had a sense of disappointment. I had become increasingly consumed with sustainable lifestyle content – scrolling through my Instagram feed, looking at beautiful handwoven baskets holding bamboo and glass toiletries – and frowned at my plastic bin smeared with toothpaste and filled with the 372 small containers of floss that my dentist gives me each time I visit. I was clearly not living my best life – or the planet’s best life.

My tenth move in 17 years, I decided that this was going to be the home I turned into my vision board. The home of a thoughtful, plant loving reader who lights fine candles, sleeps in eco-friendly linen, and owns a glass jarred spice rack – good for the planet and as delectible to the eyes as it to the stomach.

I measured and researched. I looked for brands made with sustainable materials and ethical practices. I took inventory. And I shopped.

When my new items arrived, I realized the first flaw in my plan.

At least one entire tree had given its life to deliver my new sustainable life. Some of these boxes had additional, smaller boxes inside! Plus air-filled plastic, styrofoam corners, and the undetectable but omnipresent scent of underpaid and exploited Amazon workers.

Then, almost immediately, i uncovered the second flaw in my plan.

As I dumped my spices from their plastic containers into the new vessels, and poured my oats into a beautiful mason jar, I watched this pile of trash building in the corner. All of the containers and plastic bins that did not fit into my eco-conscious aesthetic, ready to be tossed.

I suddenly realized that my dogged pursuit to live ethically was really just an irresponsible shortcut to living beautifully.

I (mostly) blame instagram. A place where a fantasy is set dressed to look like real life. A place where we can turn ourselves into real-world SIMs, and design our homes, tables, and pets to be perfect figurines.

I started to reconsider. I returned, gifted or donated what I could. I cleaned the toothpaste off my plastic bin, offered my new neighbor some floss, and started thinking about what a sustainable life really looked like. And I’ll tell you what – it’s not pretty.

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I realized that if I really cared about sustainability, I needed to actually sustain the life of things I already owned – for as long as possible. This meant abandoning the idea of a perfectly edited bathroom shelf, and embracing the chaos of reusing all the random crap that needed a second life.

Soup can? You’re a planter! Cereal Box? You’re a tool box now! Ice cream container? Hang on to these leftovers for me, k?

It’s far from a perfect system, and I’m far from perfect in it. Whenever I fill up my (plastic) tupperware with some red sauce I pray that maybe this time, the sauce will stain the sides enough so I will have no choice but to get rid of it. I still marvel at the perfectly appointed cabinets of the instagram elite.

But I also realized something else. By embracing this messy hodgepodge of reuse, I haven’t abandoned my search for beauty, I’ve simply expanded it. Because I do believe that our truest beauty is in nature. It’s out in our expansive world, in our lands and seas and secret corners.

Beauty is a parade of elephants, dusting themselves in the morning sun. It’s a lion yawning after his nap and a leopard impatiently waiting for his mother to return from a hunt. Beauty is the smile of a child’s face as she spies her first sea turtle, and it’s the dew that wets Frank’s paws every morning in the park.

In 2014, I booked a safari to Tanzania through Yellow Zebra Safaris and I’ve gone back to explore different African countries almost every year since. It was during these travels, beyond Tanzania to Botswana, and Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, that I began to understand a profound truth. The spaces we create around us – the walls and structure and comfort – they keep us safe, but they also keep us isolated. They allow us to shut out the larger world and give us the false notion of importance. The world is vast and we are so very small. It is our responsibility to exist in that smallness and not allow our personal kingdoms to damage and erode our shared planet.

So, my kitchen may never look like this:

But, to me, that’s a small price to pay for a world that looks like this:

Note: this blog post was written as entry to a competition being held by Yellow Zebra Safaris and Asilia Africa. James & YZ Safaris has been my trusted resource for five years and I wouldn’t consider traveling to Africa without having them plan my trip.

header image: https://www.instagram.com/p/BupDmTNHswd/