the constant environmentalist

Once upon a time, I was an occasional environmentalist. I sent my children to school with cloth lunchbags, packed their food in re-usable containers or placed it in zip-lock bags that I dutifully washed, hung on my knife rack to dry, and re-used. I wondered about all the resources that went into creating the bulging plastic bag I shlepped from store to home in all of seven minutes. I recycled bottles and cans and more kinds of paper than the Dept of Waste Management wanted. We used ceiling fans more than air conditioning and did not buy things with lots of packaging.

But caring about the environment was more a personal aversion to waste than a green creed; a behavior more than an identity.

And then somehow, somewhere, in the last two years, what had earlier happened to so many others happened to me: I became green. Preserving resources, consuming less, awakening more to the awes and ahs of life, seeing the gifts and burdens borne by the physical the world and increasingly responsive to my ecological footprint were not things I did but who I had become. I bought a hybrid, did not replace all my burned out bulbs (do I really need 4 over my sink?), slowly accumulated an assortment of canvas bags that live in my car-trunk, turned down the temperature on my hot water heater, wash clothes in warm or even cold water, and even began my version of composting.

Step by step, act by act, awareness by awareness, environmentalism became not a behavior, but an identity. What was remarkable is that it mimicked exactly the way I became an observant Jew. Mitzvah by mitzvah, deed by deed I changed my behavior. And then, boom. What had been an accretion of distinct acts coalesced into a new way of being. What started as somewhat awkward, self-conscious behaviors morphed into familiar habit, and a sense of pride.

Starting by doing it all is overwhelming, disorienting, very expensive and a bit much for most psyches. But act by act, sooner or later, bit by bit, we are transformed by our actions. And when that magical moment happens, we feel blessed. Given the enormity of the task before us, that is a very good thing.