Seeing the Forest for the Trees
I take every opportunity I can get to travel and go on little adventures in the outdoors. Whether it’s a few days in an Airbnb with friends, a camping trip, a long hike, or even just a picnic, shopping for food is inevitably part of the experience. Typically, in the spirit of spontaneity (this may be a romanticism of my occasional lack of planning), the trips are fairly last minute and the grocery shopping beforehand is even more so.
On a budget, moving quickly, and unsure of what the hours or days ahead might hold, my usual scrutiny over the various qualities of foods and products I buy rapidly deteriorates. I find myself opting for cheap, well-packaged food, which often puts me in the realm of mass-produced, calorie-rich, plastic-enclosed products. Practical as they may be, they often go against so many of the tenets of sustainability that I try to live by on a day-to-day basis.
There are plenty of completely valid reasons we all might stray from our personal “status quo” when shopping for a trip or other event out of the ordinary. And nevertheless, if you’re like me, there’s a guilt that follows out of that grocery store every time. “Failure”, “compromise”, “laziness” — these might seem like overly dramatic words, but when you focus so often on understanding our global food system, considering the environmental and nutritional implications of the foods and products we choose, those words can linger in the background when you break out of your sustainable habits. But in many ways, when I allow these thoughts in, I’m missing the real message of sustainability.
We’ve come to associate “sustainability” with environmentalism, but at its root, sustainability is literally about the act or ability to sustain something. That includes our behaviors and expectations. It’s not unreasonable – if you care about something and have a goal – to strive as often as possible to achieve that goal. The world of sustainability, unfortunately, presents a bit of a pitfall in that mindset. Things are constantly changing and the number of considerable variables seems to go on forever. As a result, we can feel like we’re constantly paddling upstream. This struggle is important, but it can also lend itself to an aura of negativity. It can stop us from seeing the forest for the trees.
If the bar for success is to have no impact or to have as little impact as conceivably possible, you’ll end up falling short every time. If instead, we focus on what’s reasonable in any given situation and what we can do with the information we have at the time, we might end up finding that our daily commitment results in an arc of progress that we simply can’t see on the day-to-day.
The key is always balance. There are certain variables we have control over, and there are some we don’t. The spectrum of control can also be variable. I might have time for one behavior today, but not tomorrow. I might be able to afford something this month, but next month’s budget might be a bit tighter. With so many options, and so many measures of success left subjective, it can be difficult to know if you’re doing your best. But when you simplify the equation and zone in on what choices are the best you can make right now – not yesterday, not the day before, not tomorrow or next year — you’ll find you can have your cake and eat it too. In many ways, it’s exactly like any physical training. If you scrutinize your abilities daily, you’ll see virtually no progress, and if you expect yourself to set a PR every day, you might literally hurt yourself. But if you step back and watch the arc of days, weeks, and months of commitment, you see that the ebbs and flows average out to something you can be proud of.