Our current lifestyles are not sustainable. Creating a sustainable life and society, requires we recognise and embrace those qualities that give our life meaning and are prepared to shed old habits that are unsustainable. From there we can craft a lifestyle that is more hopeful and joyous, without depriving future generations of their share of nature’s bounty.

By reducing our material consumption we create time in our lives. With this time we can deepen the quality of our experience of ourselves and of others. From here compassion emerges and we start to take responsibility for the challenges of the world.

Experiencing life - quality, efficiency, and time

Life consists of a collection of years, days and minutes in which we each have to experience the world. For most of us a large portion of our life is dedicated to work, earning a living to pay for life’s essentials and ‘feeding’ our lifestyles. Unfortunately, for many people, work is not the experience they would choose to spend their time on if they were free of financial obligations. Many of us compensate for the “suffering” of their working lives with lavish holidays, new cars, gadgets, clothes and other material pleasures. Ironically, these expenses in turn generate debt and financial need that drives them back to work, otherwise know as the “Rat Race”.

Pursuing a sustainable life offers us an opportunity to reassess how we value and use our time and provides the stimulus to break from our personal prisons. To live sustainably requires that we consume less resources (energy, water, land, etc) in maintaining our lifestyles. Hence, for most of us, sustainability means making do with spending less. While this may seem a dreary proposition at first, it actually opens the door for us to move beyond the rat race and start refocusing on what we would do with our time if the pressure to earn (and suffer for it) was reduced. It allows us to contemplate how we would choose to spend our limited time in this life, if we were freed of the financial-material cycle we are stuck in.

Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin in their book “Your Money or Your Life” demonstrate how a dollar spent translates into “hours of life energy” spent and then challenges readers to rate their expenses for the fulfillment they gave them. Knowing you are literally investing several years of your life to the flash new car may prompt a reassessment of buying a bike instead and investing the time saved in more fulfilling areas of your life.

A sustainable life provides an opportunity to reorder the priorities that shape our life. By letting go of our material addictions we can gain the freedom and time by which to deepen the quality of our experiences, our relationships and our understanding of life.

Time can be short, use it well.

Cultivating hope, honesty and integrity

Hope, honesty and integrity are going to be critical qualities as we make our lives, neighbourhoods and the global community sustainable in the face of challenges such as climate change, peak oil, pandemic disease, economic downturns, war, natural disasters, etc… Richard Eckersley wrote recently that our stories need to “reflect neither the decadence and degeneracy of nihilism nor the dogma of fundamentalism but the hope and creative energy of activism”.

Remaining hopeful, encouraging others and building our capacity to move forward are the critical qualities we can cultivate on an individual and societal level. Taking action can alleviate our feelings of hopelessness, build our capacity to do more and inspire others to do likewise. Taking action with other similarly minded people adds a layer of faith in others also doing the right thing, further building hope.

Honestly assessing your ecological footprint, understanding your need for ‘stuff’ and evaluating your progress will clarify the challenges ahead of you. Creativity is where we spice up and take ownership of our lifestyles and create routines and rituals that are expressions of who we now are.

Developing compassion, connection and purpose

The Dali Lama wrote “… when we enhance our sensitivity toward others’ suffering through deliberately opening ourselves up to it, it is believed that we can gradually extend our compassion to the point where the individual feels so moved by even the subtlest suffering of others that they come to have an overwhelming sense of responsibility toward those others.”

Globalisation and the environmental crisis are stripping bare the reality that our current lifestyles require that other people on this planet live in abject poverty, fear and ignorance. In addition, we are eating into the future prospects of our children and grandchildren.

Feeling empathy and compassion for the less fortunate, and connection to others (even the as yet unborn) are qualities at odds with the individualistic, “winner take all” mentality that pervades large parts of our society. Yet without care for others on this planet our attempts to live sustainably are destined to remain superficial.

The Dali Lama advises that we consciously extend the love and compassion we have for our close family and friends to all people. By doing this we are also extending our connection and responsibility for these people.

To build a sustainable life we need to nurture our connection with and compassion for others, allow our responsibility to awaken and distill this into a purpose or goal that we can then act upon…

Putting it all together, your sustainable life

Building a sustainable life is not as simple as buying green power and reusing our bath water on the garden, although these are certainly part of it. Sustainable living emerges organically from our choosing to develop qualities that will change the direction of our lives.

By reducing our material consumption we create time in our lives. With this time we can deepen the quality our experiences of ourselves and others. From here compassion emerges and we start to take responsibility for the challenges of the world.

Once we take on the responsibility, creativity, momentum and action comes easily as we craft our sustainable lives…