Conscious Life Choices

Modern life is abundant in “things” but they come at a cost: lots of stress and the feeling that one is on a hamster wheel running like crazy to stay in the same place, bombarded with adverts to buy more, more, more and everything seems to have a price but very little value.

The world seems to be fixated on the individual achievements, and communities are being ripped apart in the name of progress.

We are all told that if we work hard we can prosper and “have it all” but that doesn’t seem to be the result that the vast majority of us can achieve does it? We work hard for a wage that often doesn’t reflect our effort, working hours and skills, and the majority of the profit that the companies we work for goes to the owners and shareholders who get rich on our labour and tell us we’re lucky to have the job at all. All the while what we need to survive like rent, utilities, food etc are costing us more and more and it’s harder to make ends meet. These days (in the UK) a large percentage of the people who are claiming benefits have jobs. This tells us that the system is wrong, those companies are paying too little and leaving it to the welfare state to make up the difference so that they can make more profit for themselves and this is putting such a strain on the benefits system that the money available is not enough and people are falling behind. In other countries without welfare benefits people are forced into multiple jobs just to earn enough to live on.

And in the meantime the climate is changing and whether you believe it’s a natural cycle or caused by human actions the fact is that it’s real. We can see the effects right now with floods in areas that had them rarely now having them regularly, extreme heat in areas that were more temperate, ice caps melting more than they usually have and not refreezing to the same degree and sea levels rising as a result.

This is adding to the price rises for foodstuffs as farmers struggle to grow enough food or are unable to harvest them because the weather has ruined the crop.

Pollution of our air, water and food is increased by all the manufacturing processes to make the things we buy, traffic pollution and all the chemicals that are used in the modern farming practises and added to our food and body products.

But “society” as a whole is taking no notice and carrying on in the same way with throwaway consumerism the means and money the goal with no thought of the future, it’s all about profit by any means.

So what can we do? It can feel overwhelming and that we are just one person or family and we cannot influence or change anything. There are ways to influence the powers that be by voting, writing to our political representatives, signing petitions and so on that may help to change the way things are run and regulated.

We can however make real changes to the way we live our lives to reduce our dependency on the systems we live in. We can join or create communities to work, support and help each other through times of hardship and share skills, knowledge and resources to benefit each other. Groups have a larger impact on the way things are run and by joining together we can start to make our voices heard.

One major way we can help ourselves is in our own lives, making conscious choices about how we spend our money and where we buy what we need. We may buy things because we think we should have them, but do we really? Marketing is very sophisticated now and makes us feel we are missing out by not having their latest product whether we need it or not.

There is a rise in the number of people downsizing their lives by moving to smaller properties, having less things, growing food to reduce their dependency on external suppliers, preserving food, making their own clothes, cooking food from scratch, making do and mending, recycling, tool sharing, buying second hand, buying from small and/or local growers and suppliers and much more.

Self reliance has become the buzzword today; we cannot truly be self sufficient in all things but there are a lot of choices we can make that will reduce our dependency on the system and global players who are adding to our problems not helping us.

Small changes can have a ripple effect, becoming larger than the original impact, so what small changes can you make to your life?