Guilty Emissions

I often feel guilty when I drive my car. Last weekend, for example, while driving 33 kms to a dinner with old friends I felt awful that I'd chosen this luxurious mode of personal transport, motivated only by my own personal comfort and expediency.

About half way there, I remembered the restaurant was right beside a train station! and slapped my forehead for my foolishness, while nearly swerving into the next lane. (Train might've been the safer option.) Sure it would have taken more than twice as long than driving, but that would have been over 3 hours of quality reading time, whereas you can't read while driving - that's even more dangerous than self-remorseful head slapping.

Oh the guilt, the guilt. How many trees can I plant to cleanse my conscience and erase my carbon footprint?

Unexpectedly, the dinner with old friends went on well past midnight. Came 1.30am I was finally getting into my car with gratitude. Good thing I didn't take a train, they'd stopped running by that time, and to get to the cab rank on the main road, in this part of town, you apparently needed a security guard to escort you on the 5 minute walk. (Seriously.)

It was a chilly night and I drove home with the heater on, happy I'd soon be home, asleep, versus waiting to change trains on a freezing platform somewhere. Personal comfort and expediency.

But I also figured I should stop whacking myself over the head with guilt every time I get in my car. I do plenty of good things too.

I usually bicycle everywhere – sometimes people only recognize me when I'm wearing bike shorts – the car is only my back-up vehicle.

This week I remembered to take my own container to the take away shop, and my recycled plastic bags to the fruit shop where I generally avoid buying fruit or veg that is pre-packaged in any way.

The mileage on my car is about a quarter to a third of what's normal or average.

I do my best to tread lightly on this planet in dozens of tiny, seemingly insignificant ways.

Why don't we pat ourselves on the backs for these small efforts? They all matter, they all make a difference. An ocean, after all, is just a collection of little drops.

It's hard swimming against the tide all the time. And the tide of the western society in which I live goes largely against care for the environment. We swim against it as much as we can, and if sometimes we stop to rest, it's just being human.

So I say less stick, more carrot (an organic, locally grown carrot); Less guilt, and more encouragement for ourselves when we do the right thing. And thereby we'll encourage ourselves and others to do the right thing even more often.

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

Imagine my surprise when my own father, an intelligent, rational man who used to share his New Scientist magazines with me on the drive to school - expressed his doubts about the seriousness of global climate change and the accuracy of the scientific "evidence". Let's call them findings. What has Dad been reading? Who has he been listening to, I wondered. He was quick to tell me he was not a climate-change sceptic, he just doesn't think it's anywhere near as bad as we are making out, nor is mankind really having much impact on what's just a naturally occurring thing.

I had also, that same week, been slightly miffed and surprised when I tried to distribute Walk Against Warming flyers in the street. The number of people who rebuffed me was very high.

It's led me to wonder about the psychology behind this attitude. Science tells us a global crisis is looming. Some even say the crisis is already here. So why choose to ignore it, or dismiss it as an unlikely, unproven, alarmist theory?

I think Al Gore hit upon it many years ago: It's inconvenient. People don't want to think the worst, it makes them uncomfortable.

People like my dad don't want to have to give up their cars, and other modern comforts and don't want to live with guilt. They, naturally, don't want to be made to feel like "greedy pigs" for their level of consumption.

Nor do they want to live the misery of dread of the future. People don't want to worry. It's easier to think everything's rosy.

Then a friend pointed me to a couple of sites exploring the psychology of climate change denial.

There is a category of deniers who do not deny climate change is real but who are scared or apathetic. Some people are "so upset (or hopeless) about climate change they can’t bear to think about it" Peter M. Sandman.

There's also the problem of cognitive dissonance, where it is easier on the psyche to believe global warming is an unproved hypothesis than to change one's own lifestyle and ideology.

There's a good 10 minute roundup to listen to.

And Peter M. Sandman's article is a real insight into how, by changing our messaging from fear-mongering and guilt tripping, we can better communicate with sceptics and the public at large.

"...even if you’re telling people you’re certain, I would point out that they don’t have to share your certainty to support your action agenda."

He recommends focussing not on how certain you are about global warming but rather on how foolish it would be to wait for certainty before taking action against such horrific possibilities.

Why wait, indeed?

The Cold - part 3

(The final part of a sad and sorry saga)

The face-closed people pass in all directions, on purposeful trajectories, with no time for interruption or distraction. You see yourself in them. And you see how annoying it would be to have a stranger jam a flyer in your face. 'Butt out of my life. Keep your opinions to yourself. I'm busy on my way to somewhere.' You are reminded once again why you never went into politics, or advocacy, or any of those fields that require you to hold a belief so doggedly that you could force it on other people too. You realise the root of your terrible shyness lies somewhere in an empathetic belief, false or not, that people mostly just want to be left alone

After half an hour–that feels like 2 hours and is probably more like 20 minutes–you think you've successfully given away a fair number, but your bag is still full of flyers. Your head is filling with mucus. You need to take your poor sick sorry self back home. On the way you manage to leave a couple at a health food store, and another few at the bike shop, where they're friendly and open to it at least, but the pile is not shrinking. You are beginning to strongly suspect they sent you 200 flyers, instead of the 100 they promised.

So now you're back home and because you made a promise, have an obligation, you resort to the final cowardly option. You drag yourself around the neighbourhood, in a foggy groggy bubble, getting rid of the flyers into letterboxes, and even this–though you are scrupulous about respecting the No Junk Mail signs–feels like a small intrusion.

The street is the deck of a ship on an uncertain ocean, and you think you're listing slightly as you walk. You motivate yourself to keep going, with the belief that just one, maybe two, people will be happy to find the flyer. 'Thank god, I wouldn't have known about this otherwise.' You remember the lady you met at a party after last year's rally. She was annoyed and disappointed that it hadn't been publicised better, wished she hadn't missed it. If you can have reached just two people then this won't have been a waste of time.

And now the job is done, you're home, sitting down, It's just you and your symptoms and nothing else is real.

I feel for you, I really do. It sounds horrible, but I can't really imagine what it must feel like because, you see, I never get sick.

The Cold - part 2

(A sorry saga continued from Part 1)

By staying at home and remaining mostly very still, you fool yourself into thinking you're feeling ok, getting better in fact. And you can't stay at home all day, you have obligations, a promise to keep. You're actually feeling pretty good after the long hot shower–being clean always helps–so you try going outside into the world.

It hurts. You walk face-first - whack - into your wall. The light is too bright, the cold wind, too cold and windy. And when you turn the corner into the sun, it's too hot and you struggle to get your jacket off as the sweat just pours down your back. The footpath is too hard under your feet, the distance from the car park too, too far.

And that's when the coughing starts. Oh joy, a new symptom, you think. Sarcasm is the only kind of humour you can manage–though you're not laughing, you're getting pretty bored with it all in fact.

Through your blocked ears the exterior sounds are muffled and remote, further distancing you, as you realise how vital are your five senses to keeping you connected to the world. No-one can share this with you. All these people in the street, healthy, clear headed, on the other side of your murky wall, have no idea how you feel. Nor can you remember what it feels like to be them.

It's taken over your brain. You struggle to remember what it was you had to buy. Oranges. You need vitamin C. It's almost a surprise that you can manage to remember where to buy them from. But it will be no surprise that when you get home later, you'll forget and leave them in the boot of the car.

But the shopping comes later, right now you have the flyers you promised to hand out. When you volunteered for this you romantically imagined sociable commuters approaching you with held-out hands, smiling at you as they walked away, reading the flyer with interest and joy. Some of them even stop to chat about what a great thing this rally will be, what an important job the aid organizations are doing. There are rainbows in the sky, summer birds twittering and children skipping and laughing...... in your optimistic imaginary version.

On the long walk from the car to the mall you realise the truth. You wonder at what point you will have the guts to start offering the flyers to people. Instead, you let them walk past, kept at a distance by the ringing pressure in your head.

When you decide on a good spot in the mall you try your first person. They grunt or shake their head – or was that actually a snarl? – and keep walking, shrugging their shoulders away from you as if you're hideous. After several more rejections, you tell yourself to smile and not take it personally. You try to ignore the quickly dawning realisation that not everyone is as concerned about this issue as you think they should be. Which is surprising, as it will affect us all–and soon.

But you might as well be that irritating bible basher with leaflets about god the almighty saviour. Oh my god. That is how they see you. You watch the crowd. Their faces are closed. Their body language says 'No'. From a distance they see a person holding flyers and swerve away. Another nutter with a stupid cause.

That you're sick really isn't helping. You probably look miserable and that smile isn't fooling anyone. You can't help thinking about that online game you played, where every time your avatar sneezed, particles of virus sprayed through the crowd, infecting and slaying all the little people on the screen. You can see your own germs now, spreading from your fingers onto the flyers, from the flyers onto the hands of the innocent people who take them from you, and from their hands into their noses, lungs and brains. There is a certain amount of guilt attached to this. It isn't making your task any easier.

A couple of people respond well. They smile. One guy even slows down to tell you, 'Oh yeah, I already know about it, I'll be there', and your mood is buoyed for a few seconds. But really, you're either preaching to the converted, or epically failing to connect with the rest.

...the self-pity continues in Part 3...

The Cold - part 1

I never get sick. Anyone who knows me, knows this about me. Because I say it to them: 'I never get sick.'
Even in stressful situations when everyone else is succumbing, I don't. I walk off international flights without a sniffle. Survived an intense job in a small air-conditioned building where in winter everyone shared the office cold. Except me. Tough as nails. Cast iron constitution. I am immune.

But not you, probably. You will be minding your own business, not even testing your immune system in any way, and you'll be blindsided by it.
Struck down.

Your friends will see it before you do. One day you'll be lethargic and they'll say you're looking snivelly, but you'll just blame the cold air - it always makes your nose run. You don't get colds, you'll say. However, your friends know you just have a selective memory.

And then you'll wake up the next morning feeling like shit.

Sickness is a thick milky wall that blocks and separates you from the rest of the world; Imprisons you in your own glutinous pain and a physical suffering that becomes mental suffering.

Resilience is reduced to zero as the entire body focusses on an internal battle–Germ warfare–and all resistance is needed for this.
There is nothing else in your world but snot, phlegm and blood, discomfort and terrible lethargy; The smallest actions become a massive effort.
Like breathing.
Illness presses you right down to the floor and keeps you there, defeated and helpless, passive and beaten. It sucks out your motivations and passions, along with your muscles and bones.

Your sense of humour died somewhere between the third sleepless night and the first nosebleed. You're vulnerable, over-sensitive and small slights become massive personal insults. It feels like the worst, even while you know it's not; it's only a cold. But anything worse would surely be the utter pits.

So, you wonder how you would possibly manage if you were transplanted now to Pakistan: Your house is underwater, you need to carry your dying family to a boat, to dry land, where you will sit in the hot sun, with no water, waiting for something you aren’t even sure will come.
How would you survive that from inside this foggy wall of self obsession and self pity?

That pain in your head feels like your brain hardening, the neural fluids turning into thick green mucus. Blinking is an effort. An army of Lilliputian germs have pinned you down and you feel you've given in all too easily to the state of homebound inertia you find yourself in. If your body was an emotion it would be depressed, downtrodden.

The simplest thought is a struggle. Try to avoid making decisions.

You move in slow motion. Everything is in slow motion. The day lasts forever.
Move too fast and bits of you slosh around, pressing at your skin.
You didn't know your eyeballs could ache.

You didn't know you could be driven to such a tragically melodramatic mindset.

...the tragic melodrama continues...

Use It or Lose It

Part three of my running tale

I've reassessed my previous bias - ok hatred - of running, now that I'm guilty of practicing it.

As it turns out, running actually has a few benefits. Who knew? The thousands who join the city2surf with enthusiasm - even fly interstate for it - wasn't a clue? The number of people I see doing it around me in the streets every day wasn't a clue?
Nope, I'd just assumed they were masochists.

I was wrong.

My insides are far fitter now. It turns out that none of my preferred forms of exercise work the cardio-vascular system nearly as well as I'd thought. Cycling up that particular dreaded hill now noticeably easier. And I am genuinely surprised to feel a strength in my legs that I didn't know I was missing until I tried a few deep squats in yoga. Wow! They felt so different - as in, I could actually do them, properly, no cheating. Such power. Such strength. My legs were holding me up.

It's the fastest, most effective and way to warm up on a cold winter day. Within minutes of being cranky and frozen with numb toes, I'm sweating and warmed from the inside.

Running's also very time efficient. I can do it whenever suits me, and there's no loss to travel time - I start and finish running at my front door. I can adapt it to suit how much time I have available and just do a short one if I have a busy day ahead. Whereas you can't just walk out of a yoga class halfway thru in order to still make that 9am meeting.

Also, if I hadn't been out running I'd have never have seen that pod of whales off the coast that day. It was my first whale sighting.

- - - -

It was no surprise to find I'd stopped running the minute my shoulder started to heal and the physio gave me permission to go back to all those other forms of exercise that I love. It fell right off the agenda, with alacrity. So after a week or so, some urge made me make myself get back out there, to maintain all that good work I'd done over the last month, seeing as I'm quite liking my new and improved cardio-vascular system.

That was when I learned the real truth of "use it or lose it."

I won't lie. After 10 days break It was hard work; harder even, it seemed, than my very first day out. But it was also victorious run. That day I finally overtook another runner. Ok, he was about 100 and had no actual muscles left in his legs, but he was "running" (what an inspiration) and so was I and I overtook him. Winner!

Running isn't so bad actually

Part Two

(continued from previous post in which I surprise myself)

I stretched diligently, and for a good half hour, after that first "run". Even so, there is no need to describe the inevitable pain I was in afterwards, since that's surely a given. Muscles used in new ways like to make a big noise about it, and then make other prosaic things difficult - like bending over, or simply walking around the house.

However, it did start to get a little easier each day. Hm, "easier"? Let's just say I noticed improvement as my body got more used to this new way of getting around. I stopped to walk a lot less, went incrementally further from home on each outing and gradually achieved a style that I can pretty confidently call "running". In the olden days we'd call it jogging and this is probably a much better description, but, one must be up to date.

I even overtook another runner one day. Turns out she was just slowing down to check her iPod, then she passed me a few minutes later and I never caught up to her again.

Then there was that cute time I did a little dance with girl taking a brisk walk. I caught up to her at the base of a set of stairs, running along the approach as she walked.

I'd learned the hard way, the first day, that I wasn't fit enough to run up stairs without completely exhausting myself. So I dropped into a brisk walk at the foot of the first flight. But the walking girl started running. She trotted up the first flight and overtook me. On the flat of the landing I ran again, overtaking her as she walked. Then I walked again up the next flight as she up ran past me again. And so we did this serendipitous little zig-zagging motion. It was a sweet moment of perfectly coordinated, lucky timing that I almost wish I'd been able to step back and watch. It reminded me of a dance performance I once saw on an escalator at the Tate Modern.

As it was, I was happy to be the participant this time. More and more I'm thinking running isn't completely shit.

...third and final part continues...

Running? Moi?

Part One

As the sort of person who likes low-impact, creative types of exercise, I've always been very anti-running.

In the past, the following things have been heard from out of my mouth

- Running is terrible for your knees.

- Have you ever noticed the pained and desperate looks on all runner's faces? Running must feel really crap. They never look happy.

- I can't run. It makes me feel like i'm going to vomit.

- It makes women's uteruses drop out.

All the bad press about the bad things running can do to your body, combined with the grizzled expressions on every runner I ever passed, and traumatised memories of enforced cross-country running at high-shool, had confirmed to me that it was one of the crappest exercise forms ever, and I wouldn't be caught dead doing it, ever.

So no-one was more surprised than me to find me in my sister's hand-me-down Nikes, "running" along the promenade recently.

In my defense, I was desperate. It was the only form of exercise I could think of that didn't use upper body (the biceps tendon to be precise), and, looking back, the seeds were being sewn over the last couple of months. My biceps tendon physio is a keen runner, so there may have been some subliminal messaging there. A friend who moved overseas took it up for want of any other option in her new town. Two other friends - beautiful, dainty, professional dancers - told me, separately, about how they'd taken up running. When they said it, they both looked as surprised about it as I am about myself now. At the time I just thought they were crazy, but the fact that they were doing it must have given it some validity and slightly shifted my subconscious perception of the hated sport.

Because then there I was, one morning, on the promenade, somehow.... well it's hard to describe exactly what you'd call this shuffling/brisk-walk kind of forward propulsion I was doing, but it was an approximation of running.

Of course every other runner passed me, some power walkers even passed me, and I stopped frequently to walk in between the bursts of optimistic shuffling. Importantly, and this was key to my trying it again the next day, I didn't once feel like throwing-up.

Part 2 continues...

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam

The trouble with the Interweb is it's fuller of spam than a bad prepackaged salad.

Email spam hit critical mass some years ago.

The Linked-in groups that I join are supposed to be a forum to share ideas, advertise jobs, network, seek advice - and it's also a spammers heaven to promote their get rich quick conferences, e-books and "webinars".

I get text messages from people trying to sell me discount services that are of no interest to me.

Do a google search for something and there's a good chance at least one of the links will take you to an irrelevant site that's just put that key word in their meta tags.

And now i see the peril of finally making one's blog vaguely public and searchable. Today I received my first post comment from a non-friend or family member. Some company selling designer shoes rammed in a senseless paragraph in which every second word was the brand name, underlined and hyperlinked.

My blog has been spammed.

Is this a good sign? Does this mean i'll soon be famous?

There are More Runners Than Usual

Lots of runners out today.
I wonder if they're all training for the city2surf.

Not that barefoot guy in the wetsuit with the board under his arm, obviously.
He's running to catch the swell while it's still going off.

And not me either.
Obviously.