Category: Conversations On Change


True Collaboration Calls For Carbon Offsetting

Photo by Cristina Cerda on Unsplash

I experience an increasing tension about the impact of my convenient lifestyle. Over 25 years I became accustomed to the fast pace of growth driven business at the heart of the disposable consumerism of big city London.

In the past 3 years I have come to question the primary drivers of business that gobble up our time, our joy, our spirit and our planet. I let go of living in London and of sacrificing my wellbeing and talents to a vision that didn’t belong to me.

I have found living directly connected to the elements of nature e.g. by the sea or in the mountains grounds me in a different rhythm, I think about light switches, own a bag for life and a reusable coffee cup, I choose zero air miles vegetables over world traveller imposters, cringe at plastic packaging, have nightmares about water bottles and the decimation of our oceans, walk more, spend less and sleep better.

I choose to live in the creative orientation, beyond the normal constraints of survival e.g. 9-5 job, regular income, a fixed abode. It is a wild ride at the extremes of existence that few people purposefully choose to do. I actually and metaphorically choose to voyage in unknown domains.

I choose to tread lightly on this earth; the call to be a hermit is seductive. I am passionate to leverage the genius of our collective creativity but I cant be bothered with kudos, conferences or the whitewash of feel-good collectives. I embrace the achievements of science, technology and innovation but don’t know where to begin to use them to transmute and transfigure life on earth.

I believe that we are better together, contributing the best of who we are to receive the fullness of who we can be. I believe that every human being has the potential to be part of the global synergy.

From the bottom of my heart I believe true collaboration is simple and it is the biggest challenge we are being invited to face at this time.

There is maverick community of early adopters out there, those with their toes in the water. I am called to join them and thanks to technology I can find and connect to them on line but is no avoiding the truth that the substance of collaboration is love and love calls for intimacy and vulnerability, for physical as well as ideological closeness, for kinship, sharing, eye to eye connection and the ability to be with and hang out in the messy entanglement of humanness.

I would happily stay at home – as I said earlier the call to be a hermit is seductive – especially when flying and many forms travel have such a polluting impact on our environment. Fortunately I have a friend who has a mate who has founded a company that helps those of us who caught in the carbon/climate predicament https://www.clevel.co.uk/flight-carbon-calculator/