Advice from a small town girl

I am, at worst, somewhat neurotic. At best, I’m conflicted.

Sometimes I can’t believe how much time (and energy) I spend just trying to decide what’s important to me.

There’s the (for want of a better term) American in me. She’s the one who thinks that because it’s there, it must be good, and it’s there just for me. Never mind that Americans are the 5 percent of the world’s population that consumes 25% of the available energy.

She’s the one who wants to step up to the plate and take a swing at running a business. On further reflection, though . . .

. . the organic farmer in me wriggles to the forefront of my consciousness. She believes, deep in her core, that the right thing to do is to produce (herself) as much as possible of what she consumes. To avoid perpetuating an economic system that relies on cheap labor in Third World countries and fossil fuels to transport the resultant goods.

Then there’s the real me.

She’s the one who crawls out of bed in the morning, staggers to the pre-programmed coffee pot for the first large mug of several, lets the dogs out and then plants her butt on the sofa with a book. Preferably fiction.

She’s an American, too.

Since it’s an election year, I hear a lot about “the American people” and what they want.

Frankly, I don’t care.

At the moment, anyway, I don’t believe that “the American people“ are well-educated enough or thoughtful enough to be in charge.

And they’re not, anyway. In charge, that is.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all an elaborate hoax.

That the real enemy of democracy and what our founding fathers intended is ourselves. Our boundless need for more and more and more. And our complacency.

Our belief that we are entitled to fresh raspberries in December and watermelon in April, regardless of the impact on our children’s future.

Our belief that anything can be excused in the name of progress and capitalism.

Our belief that continuing on our current path will lead to anything but utter devastation.

And I’m not talking about the federal debt, although I’m more than willing to admit that it has me worried.

The root of both problems, though, is the same.

We’re not thinking for ourselves anymore.

We’re being bombarded with noise. Noise from the television, noise from talk radio, noise from politicians and business people, radicals and conservatives. Noise from websites that tell us what we want to hear, because God forbid that we should make any changes. That might be painful.

We’re told what we, as Americans, must believe, if we are part of “the American people.”

I am an American people. And I don’t think that contraception is dangerous or that a 3,000-mile pipeline is the answer to our gas-price “crisis.” I don’t believe that all our ills will be solved if we allow poor people to fend for themselves, or if we give them everything they want.

I do believe, if we stop allowing others to think for us, that we can use our considerable collective brain power to come up with practical, community-minded, people-instead-of-profit-oriented solutions.

That if we inform ourselves about not just the government but also about the companies we support by doing business with them, regardless of how they treat their employees or the environment, then we can each make a small difference daily that can add up to enormous changes over time.

We don’t all have to be the organic farmer, but if we stop buying blueberries from Chile and start buying at least 50% of our food from sources within 100 miles of home (Wal-Mart doesn’t count), we can have a positive influence on not only the local economy, but also the world-wide environment.

Finally, the whole point of this essay is that I was planning it when I was (alone) in my car this morning, wasting fuel, which is when I realized I should be riding a bike.