Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Patience, I Want It NOW!

“We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”  This quote is sometimes attributed to Earth Day founder, David Brower, who was likely quoting a Native American proverb.  It is near and dear to me as a lover of our planet, as a parent and a grandparent, and someone who has asked myself for a very long time, how we can live as harmoniously with our environment as animals do in nature.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring celebrated its 50th Anniversary last year, and things are slightly more promising than in the generation she took her photos and recorded what was happening on our planet - but I find myself longing to see change for the good happen more rapidly.

This week has given me more opportunity to deeply consider what I am ultimately longing for and dreaming about in my vision for Sustainable Tarpon Springs.  In the process of moving forward in our community, I have been asked about my ‘agenda’ and challenged to think more deeply about what sustainability and community means to me.

We all have talents to share with one another.  We don’t always have to put a monetary value on things we do.  It is time to rediscover the meaning of being ‘good neighbors’ and spontaneously help one another out, or even share ways to live quality lives ‘off-the-grid’ from our current economic system.

This ‘off-grid’ living can take many avenues:

 It can be developing a network for homeschooling or ‘unschooling’ our children or grandchildren,

It can be the same network for caring for our elders,

It can be sharing our food growing spaces and knowledge, agreeing upon who grows various fruits or vegetables within the separated properties - recognizing we will trade, share, and sell our produce as a group,

It can be creating a network for collectively purchasing solar items at a better price.

The opportunities for what we can do together are endless.  It is a matter of getting to know one another, building trusting relationships, being willing givers in order for the karma of ‘reciprocal’ blessings to kick in!

“Ask not what your ‘community’ can do for you; ask what you can do for your ‘community’, ‘ adapted from JFK’s inaugural in address in 1961 and still resonating within me.  We don’t live in isolation, and if we think we do, or we try to ‘keep to ourselves’ it is a sad delusion.  The essence of our shifting paradigm to to truly recognize our Oneness, and ask how we can utilize our gifts for the common good of our community and one another.

Remembering and renewing the closely knit social structures of former ‘Earth Communities’ is our hope for survival into the future.  It is slow but surely happening, and I am patient - but I also want it now.