While traveling in Germany and Austria during the last couple weeks, it became obvious that the culture has a lower level of stress than we do in North America, this is a generalization, but I think it holds strong. Rarely have I seen an obese European on this trip, the number of cyclist commuting and out for recreation is extraordinary, and the general pace of work and life seems to be one notch slower and thus intrinsically more satisfying. There is time to go out for a run and still spend quality time with the family; in Europe you can have your cake and eat it too! My observations seem to be supported by a recent article I read from WorldChanging on working habits. Read through and you’ll see the stats listed about European work habits and the results from that.

 

“I argued that the long hours we in the United States work — some 300 more per year than western Europeans — mean we are more likely to rely on “convenience” and disposable items, such as heavily-packaged fast foods and single-use goods. I told my audience that many people had told me they were “too pressed for time even to recycle.” Moreover, our long work hours allow us to produce and buy more and more “stuff,” resulting in a greater pressure on resources and an inevitably stream of more waste.” MORE

 

 

I recently read a stat that said one third of all food is thrown away in the modern, western household. That doesn’t go just for food either, the amount of waste is incredible, and we have become complacent with it, no worries. I’d like to share a beautiful account of just the opposite from author Paul Hawken, from his recent book Blessed Unrest:

“A wasteful society is a relatively new phenomenon. I spend part of my childhood on a farm belonging to my Swedish grandmother and Scottish grandfather, where nothing much was thrown away. The barn was full of used washers, bolts, wire, and doodads. In the kitchen ever other plate was chipped, but the china never left the dinner table with food on it. Gravy and juices were mopped up by homemade bread, vegetable peelings went to the chickens, the shells from the eggs eaten at breakfast were put into the coffee grounds, the coffee grounds were placed into the compost, the compost was tilled into the garden, the tomatoes and corn from the garden were sealed in glass jars that joined the jams and jellies lining cool, dark basement walls. Paper lunch bags were brought back from school and neatly folded for use the next day. Our idea of play included capturing horned toads and pretending they were dinosaurs, or lying face-up in irrigation ditches, the tiny fry tickling our toes, and imagining we were floating down a great Amazonian river. Our notion of a toy was a bald tire swinging from the sycamore. Had my grandparents been from Chile, Korea, or Kerala, life essentially would have been the same. Nothing would have been wasted.”

 

I think a lot can be learned from this short excerpt.