As an adolescent, I was passionate about the environment.
I don't remember how it started--maybe some environmental article in a library book--but the plight of animals and rainforests thousands of miles away captured my heart.
I started environmental clubs Online, read Silent Spring, and (much to the consternation of my Chinese-American parents) became a vegetarian.
After I became home schooled just prior to high school, I was certain that my life purpose was to live in a tree in Oregon as a member of Earth First!
Then, something happened.
I guess you'd call it, growing up. Some call it selling out.
Whatever it was, I shut down and closed my eyes to the movement. I mean, I still cared . . . when I thought about it. But I avoided thinking about it as much as possible.
I started eating meat again and stopped reading the activist mags. My life stopped being about the environment, and it began to focus on people I loved and the unforgettable, careless adventures of college.
Later, as my graduate program ended, I was focused on getting a job to pay the bills, wedding planning, you know, LIFE stuff.
In a way, what happened to me felt like release. It was like I was done not living in the present, in the now, in my community.
Being part of the environmental movement pulled me away from my community, my family, and my friends and projected me into the fate of rainforests and endangered species I only knew in pictures.
It called for daily sacrifices that benefited an unknown held up by my imagination. When the stresses and joys of the present called to me, this imagination wasn't enough.
That's why I believe that sustainability is a movement with a future. It's not a movement of tree huggers, which sounds good in theory . . . unless you live in the Sonoran desert.
It's a movement that calls for balance and harmony in all aspects of one's lifestyle.
It doesn't spurn the things that humans love, but it looks for a way that what we desire can coexist with the very foundation of life: the ecosystem.
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