APLS Carnival - Mind Games?

The topic of this month's APLS (Affluent Persons Living Sustainably) Blog Carnival is "mind games". More specifically, our host Cath of VWXYNot wants to know what kind of mind games other green beans play to force (trick? make?) themselves do the right thing - the GREEN thing - day in and day out.

I have a few obvious tricks: if you want to stop using paper napkins and towels, then don't buy any. You'll be forced to use cloth, right? Can't get away from those pesky, yet super convenient, plastic baggies? Stop buying them and you'll be sure to come up with another option.

I've made deals with myself like "If you don't bring your travel mug, you can't stop at Starbucks!" Oh wait, I think that trick was to save money and wean myself from the IV caffeine drip. Never mind that.

It's days like today though - bitterly cold, snow on the ground, gusty wind - that I pull out the big motivation. You see, as a result of my refusal to go outside in such weather, the little waste basket for compost in our bathroom got full and the food scrap bucket under our sink overflowed into a second bucket until, finally, I convinced myself to take it out today.

These are the times, when logic and reasoning and willing myself to do something don't work, that I think of the quote by Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson~

"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."

With that in mind, I pulled on my snow boots and heavy coat to brave the elements. I walked up the hill to end of our driveway to check the mail and bring in the trash cans, then across our property to dump the compost.

I thought of my great grandma who passed away not to long ago. She left the hustle and bustle of Miami in the 60's to move to the mountains of North Carolina. She reduced, reused, recycled, composted, threw her bath water on the garden vegetables, and burned any trash that was left (I guess that wasn't a bad idea at the time). When that wasn't enough, she moved to a farm in Tennessee where she raised cattle on 200 acres - grass fed, free-range, healthy cattle. She had a garden for her food and a goat for her milk. She went out and did her farm chores in rain or snow and loved every minute of it. She was madly in love with her husband and had to be pryed from the farm years after he passed.

Thinking about her today made me smile. I felt like I was transported into her world and it made me happy that I was out turning compost in the freezing cold, living the way she had once lived. Even though she'll never hear my words of thanks, she did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. And that's all the motivation I need.