Originally published in Lake of the Woods Area News, Volume 54, Number 2, Spring 2024
What does it mean to be sustainable? A term that is so ubiquitous in our lives carries a lot of meaning, and at the same time it is used so much that it can lose meaning. We are aware that there are elements of our society that simply cannot carry on indefinitely, and require some action to be able to sustain our society, ourselves, and our descendants.
On an individual level, we often think about this concept in terms of climate change, and lowering our carbon footprint. While this is a worthwhile goal, in this article series, I want to suggest and explore some other tools we can use to steer ourselves to a sustainable future, and indeed, a better future for all. The tool I will discuss in this article is story, and how to use story to take us from where we are, to a place that we want to be.
This may sound a little esoteric—but story and narrative are perhaps the most powerful tools humans use, and these tools can help us to navigate the coming decades to a sustainable future. It is through story that we humans can create a common narrative that allows us to work together to create social groups, nations, institutions, and entire cultures.
What is the story that we are telling ourselves today? It depends on who you listen to, but when I read the news, I see stories of a world perpetually at war, divided by politics, and increasingly hammered by the climate crisis. There are dozens of movies depicting a post-apocalyptic future, but there are few that depict a bright sustainable future for humanity. It’s no wonder that many of us feel anxious about the future.
What we need is a vision of what we want our future to be like, and to create a narrative that helps guide our actions into that future. How do we live our lives as a part of a sustainable story, and live a more sustainable life?
Let me suggest an exercise. First, we need to imagine a sustainable future. Imagine a future that you want to live in and the future you want your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to live in. Use your imagination, but I suggest you think of solutions that exist today, and extrapolate their use into your life for the future. What does it look like? What does this feel like? How do we live? How do we relate to one another and the world around us? How do we eat, travel, work, and play? This could be a fun exercise to do with loved ones, including kids and grandkids. I’m sure they would have lots of ideas. You could “create” this world in your minds, write it down, or draw pictures.
Now is the tricky part. The paradox (of sorts) is that on our own we cannot cause a sustainable future to come to pass, but the only way it can happen is through the independent actions of countless individuals. So the question we must ask ourselves is, “If my dream of a sustainable future were to be possible, how should I, with my own unique sets of gifts, passions, influence, and capacity lead my life?” This is no easy question, and its answer will change over time. I also think it’s important to try to answer this question without being attached to the future unfolding in any specific way. The beauty of this approach is, regardless of what the future brings, we get to find satisfaction and purpose in creating the kind of future we want in the present.
I will share some examples from my life. I love growing vegetables, taking gentle care of the tender seedlings and providing them an optimal environment to grow, cultivating them with the whole ecosystem in mind, providing food and habitat for bugs and birds along the way. I envision a future where the way we feed ourselves nourishes our bodies, our communities, and the natural world.
I wanted my work to be something that aligned my gifts, passions, and vision for the future, so I decided to start a vegetable farm. In my work, I get to imagine what kind of food systems make it possible for humans and the natural world to thrive. I love being a part of that story, and it brings purpose, satisfaction, and sustainability to my life right now while contributing to a sustainable potential for the future.
Being a part of a sustainable story doesn’t need to be as large an action as starting a business. We make little and big choices every day that have an impact.
Rather than try to sort out the “right” choices from the “wrong” choices to lead sustainable lives, I encourage readers to try thinking about how these choices play into the story of their lives. Remember that there is no action too small to have an impact. It’s a cliché, but children truly are the future, and simply fostering a sense of love for the natural world in our kids and grandkids is perhaps one of the highest impact actions we can do to create a sustainable future.
What might being a part of a sustainable story look like at the lake? Anything that brings us into closer connection and relationship with the nature around us is a great place to start. When building, we can choose to use local materials, we have an abundance of wood around, and there are some local and regional mills that can supply quality local lumber. Gardening has been mentioned by many contributors, and for good reason. Gardening not only benefits the broader environment, but our mental and physical health as well. Choosing play activities like swimming, hiking, and paddle sports bring us in closer contact to nature as well as having less of an impact than gas powered play.
Despite the challenges we face as a species and as individuals, the future holds infinite possibility. The world changes every day, and each and every one of us has an influence on that change, however small that may be. Right now, the problems we face feel intractable, and it’s easy to feel stuck in that story, but the more people that believe a story that things can get better, the more likely that they will.
The stories of our lives weave the tapestry of our culture. We not only need to create a story for ourselves to help guide us in our personal lives, we need to create common stories that we can use to work together to create a sustainable culture.
It is my hope that this article is a small contribution to that collective story.
