Personal Responsibility
Posted October 1st, 2007 by Jenn
A loaded phrase, isn't it.
How do you choose to live in this world? I recycle, carting my stashes to friends as Denver does not implement recycling in buildings of 4 apartments or more. I do my best to drive as little as possible, but I admit to getting lazy this summer. Do I buy compact fluorescent bulbs which take more energy to manufacture and are more toxic to dispose of?
See what I am getting at here? How I choose to practice is not just about my attempt to heal individuals for a living, but how do I heal and how do I choose to live in this world. How I can can heal more using fewer resources; being bike and bus accessable for patients, making the clinic a viable healing tool for more people, having to heat/cool only 1 room rather than several smaller rooms, but still buying the plastic business card holders cause my resource/networking table was a mess without them.
There is taking up your space in this world, taking up more than your space and taking up even more space but thinking you're not. What good is buying carbon credits if you live in a house big enough to required an excessive amount of resources to build it in the first place? The U.S. is in an economic crisis, the counties surrounding the city I live in have some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country and the self proclaimed leaders of my profession would still rather have me cater to the top 5% of the population (and push us faster to a 3rd world economy). If I cater to that smaller group of potential clients, is this a responsible use of the resource that is my ability to help people heal from their illnesses? How can this resource be best used by the most people possible with minimal impact and generated waste?
For the last few months, 10 years after graduating from acupuncture school, I feel as if I am being truly responsible in using my skills as a healer. The resource may be finite (the heavy duty Jing tonics are en route), and part of the responsible use of it is learning how to parcel it out in a renewable manner, but when well tended acupuncture is one of the most economical and low impact forms of health care avaialble. Personal responsibility indeed.
Re: Personal Responsibility
Hi Jen,
Great post. And thank you Lumiel for the link to the yes mag video which inspired a post on my own blog which no doubt I will recycle into a new organic variety of granola CAN posting. Hope is an important commodity these days.
I like your big thinking. What good is merely putting needles into people without looking at the larger situation of the ecological crisis, using our clinics as tools for education, as well as designing them to be models of wise use.
For example, I chose CommuniChi's location because it will be on Seattle's new light rail line scheduled to open in a little over a year and a half. We are also on several bus lines. And better yet, as many CANners have already shared, community acupuncture is neighborhood acupuncture. Many people walk to the clinic, or ride a bike (as I do).
By the way, I made a little business card holder out of a few scraps of wood and some glue. A little sawing here, bit of sanding and gluing there. Instant biz card holder.
Community Acupuncture's people friendly vision and philosophy is completely in synch with this sort of simple eco-friendly style. Most of us I imagine got recycled recliners, inhabited older buildings, and designed our offices with non-extravagant purchases.
This in itself sends a message to people that a healing center, just like a community, just like a home, just like a planet, does not need to be centered around having the latest high tech gadgetry or big money fancy creations on whatever scale. We can live simply, share our resources, and create happiness without perpetuating the insane consumerism that infects the world.
As an aside, a tele-marketer called me the other day - usually I just say no thanks and hang up as soon as I realize the gig, but I let this one run. She wanted donations for kids so they could have a happy halloween or maybe it was Christmas or something. I said I'd be happy to donate some used toys or children's books. But now, they wanted cash to enable the kids to go on their shopping sprees. It's tragic how children are taught the lie that happiness is buying stuff from the mall.
Whoa...back on topic boy: So, when the sun shines in Seattle (less and less these days), we get lots of passive solar heat in our treatment room. No AC in summer means no Evil Chi. Though occasionally when it gets over 90 in the tx room, we use a few fans besides opening windows. We do check the weather forecast and if it's sunny and hot, we'll pull the blinds the night before to keep it a bit cooler.
I didn't know that about compact fluorescents requiring more energy to make and more toxic to dispose of. Are you saying that one should avoid them and use traditional incandescent? We do have quite a few lamps in our front reception area - some with regular light bulbs, one halogen, a couple of compact flourscents.
Re: Personal Responsibility
Jenn Gross: Walkin' the walk.
Beautiful.
Re: Personal Responsibility
These Yes!magazine videos of interviews will help fill in some of the missing answers, and more importantly, give us hope. Jenn's post encourages me to share this.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1612
Re: Personal Responsibility
Great post Jen. Goodness knows I struggle with these questions every day. The carbon credits thing drives me crazy too (as does the electric car - I mean, the electricity is made somewhere, right?). But I still live a plane trip away from my family, and I'm writing this on my laptop (handed-down, but still); I *love* my iPod (which I use on my long walk-instead-of-drive to work) etc. And then I wonder about the ecological costs of producing and shipping needles to the US from China (or Japan, or Korea)...oof. Every purchase is totally fraught. Talk about your constant low-level stresses.
Part of what sucks is that we're encouraged by the Powers that Be (big capital?) that it's our individual responsibility to change all this. Of course it's great to take individual responsibilty and do what we can. But if things are set up that the only job you can get is in the strip mall across town from where you need to drop your kid off to school (what happened to school buses, anyway???), well. Big changes are in order, for sure.