“The only constant is change.”
Whoever’s wise words can claim this statement hit on a goldmine. I am struck over and over again how everything is constantly changing around me, and that it is the only consistency between these varieties of events. Along with this change comes growth and progress, sometimes, and that is what I feel has come along with this year. There has been constant change: study abroad, old things dying out, new things coming into play, new friendships and new flavors to life. I feel like this year has matured me in ways I hadn’t thought imaginable, and now I no longer shy away from being called an “adult.” However,(!) I think it is important to make the distinction between an adult and a grown-up. These two things are entirely different entities to be understood. One is maturity, one is rigid stuffiness. I hope to never be a grown up, but yet always to be becoming more of an adult.
Looking back on my blogs, part of this maturity I have seen growing in me is the understanding of the responsibility laid upon my shoulders. I talk about this in my mid-term synthesis, that I can’t”be a passive agent any longer. WE are empowered, we are educated about what’s going on, we’ve seen the trash, the need for the community garden, the effects of man not living in harmony with the environment, what are we going to be doing about it? How are we going to fight apathy in all levels of our lives?”
We are responsible. If we want a more sustainable campus, city and nation, it does nothing to sit back and criticize instead of getting involved. It is much harder to get involved. This is a valuable lesson I learned from this year and will continue to apply in my travels and studies abroad. Getting involved and hands-on is critical to learning and growth, especially in connection to a topic like the environment.
In my blog “The Wondrous Cicada Larvae,” I talk about how studies have shown that people are more likely to pollute if they see that other have done the same. This is part of the reason why it is so important everything that we do to be good stewards of the environment around us. Humans are hopelessly social creatures, and take cues from the people around them about what is good and bad and what they should and should not do. If there are people living out environmentally ethical conclusions they have made, other people notice and follow suit. That is what is beautiful about following through with convictions- people recognize authenticity and have a desire to follow. People see a conviction of responsibility and the active will to carry this conviction out and are drawn to it.
However, I think Phoebe puts it well when she says that, “though it is important to be environmentally conscious and resist the devastation of our earth, it is also important to have a healthy love of humanity that does not ‘turn responsibility into self-hatred.’ Though I normally don’t think of humans as existing outside of the natural world, I have been torn as to how to reconcile my love for nature with the human destruction and development that I benefit from and take part in every day.”
In order to get people to love and care about the environment, it takes more than a demonstration of your commitment to sustainability and your authenticity in your practices of it. It requires relationship and love for others to effectively institute sustainable change within a given issue. The issue can sometimes be strong enough to hold groups of people together, but there is really something about how people are connected through relationships that can propel an idea or movement forward from that. This is something I have grown in my understanding of not only at our EL service sites but my other service sites in Richmond as well.
Another theme I notice running through my posts is how people are affected by the environment around them and how this causes people to react. In both my posts “the rain…ahh a familiar environment” and “Itchy eyes, beautiful dogwoods,” I am in some way talking about how affected I am by the weather. It can dictate the way a day goes, no? If you don’t have a terribly rigid schedule, on a rainy day, you can pull a Shannon and heat up some Easy Mac and curl up to Modern Family; but if its sunny, your day will look dramatically different. I mention in one of the posts how people’s relationships are affected by the changes in weather, and how fascinating this is. I haven’t noticed the correlation between the weather in any other place but here, and part of me wonders if it is because the weather is so alive, and people are connected to things that are living and changing as they are. The seasons are clearly defined. The trees respond in joy to the awakenings of spring, and their moods clearly follow in accordance with how the seasons say they must go. Not only this, but the weather is temperamental and can fluctuate like that great friend you have that sometimes gets into the strangest of moods, so it is difficult to not relate to it. It has a personality and life, which is something people are drawn to.
Finally, to conclude, looking back on Earth Lodge as a whole and over the year, it carries a slight ineffability to it. I don’t know exactly how to put my experience into words, except knowing that it was altogether very good. I like how Caroline puts it in her final synthesis. She says that,
“The experience that Earth Lodge has given us this year are not merely adventures and memories; they are tools that we will be able to use throughout the rest of our lives in order to continue the journey of both self-growth and protection of the world that surrounds us.”
This is part of the ineffability of Earth Lodge: how do you describe something that is so deeply a part of you? Sometimes it feels almost impossible to step outside of that and see things for their nature and their tangible effect on you. Caroline describes it also as a “process” and I whole-heartedly agree. We went through a lot together over this last year, and we well never be the same from the experience because it has taught us how to look at the world in a whole new way, which changes you forever.