funny how
mind your peas & queue
I realise it is an insufferable habit to peer into other people’s shopping trolleys and make guesses about their state of torpor and poor little stolid fat inactive kids as a result. And many people would see it as high-handed that I carry a thick black marker for amending signage that has missed its apostrophe. Never mind that our language is a treasury built by unremembered hands, a hundred thousand folk poets who first said, “male and female bolts” and “I couldn’t have got a word in edgewise.”
Never mind that our bodies are treasuries of soul, each body carting a soul never before seen & irreplaceable, and we are filling them up with stodge and sludge. (“Ahh… you’re not feeding that to your kids, are you? I mean, cos you realise that’s not actually food…”) As for that noxious petroleum dishwashing liquid that will induce a mild autism to make it easier for your little ones to sit a lifetime on the couch – just because it has a green dolphin on the label and is “now with added lemon juice” does not make it biodegradable. Unless you consider that ‘biodegradable’ really means just, ‘it will break down.’ In which case no worries – even nuclear waste is biodegradable, if you don’t mind waiting a few million years.
Everything you buy matters. Everything you eat builds you. Everything we say builds our world and nothing matters more than that.
9 comments on “mind your peas & queue”
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The most political thing that you do every day is to decide what to put into your mouth.
Great sentiment – you are what you eat, think, say etc.
We should all be more mindful about the impact of chemicals within our foods, houses, streets on our bodies and our families. That kind of reflection is definitely a ‘place’ individuals, communities and nations should strive for. To get there though, we need to ensure that we support others who, in our opinion, may not make the best decisions/choices for their health and well-being.
We need to always be mindful that ‘good’ choice is enabled by a whole bunch of privileges – privileges that not all possess. You do realise that many people don’t actually realise ‘that’s not actually food’?
Rather than make subjective judgements about what other people put into their shopping trolleys, should we not focus our attention on what is on the shelves in the first place?
Once again, I praise your intention. However, on one hand we have a media on hyper-alert about food-as-lifestyle choice; and a society that equates a person’s physical appearance with character (ie. you’re fat therefore, you must be lazy, stupid, have no will-power etc). On the other hand, we have a big-business-framed diet, beauty and fitness industry that helps to define what is acceptable and not acceptable.
We each have our own journeys. Accepting other people’s journeys is part of that.
Dear Leesa, thank you for raising this, I agree entirely. And these multi-layered privileges of which you speak are an obligation, it seems to me, to each of us to keep on stripping back and stripping back the gulfs between us that prejudice & privilege create. And to be very sure we are open to the myriad experiences that will always outnumber our own. We each have our own little skull from which to peer out. But we have ears and imaginations, and tongues.
I would like to also add that my intention does not include judging other people, an activity that seems to me arrogant & very likely to result in self-perpetuating wrong assumptions. Besides that: our forever flawed actions do not impair anyone’s value as a member of our community, “a soul never before seen and irreplaceable.”
However I do make guesses, as I said, about other people’s state of mind and priorities by their actions. These guesses can harden into presumption & judgement. But even then there is a big difference between disagreeing with someone’s actions and judging them as a person. Then again it is all hands on deck at this stage – we can’t slowly drift into generalised environmental awareness over the next three generations. Tuvalu’s crops are already infested with salt. They only make junk because we all buy it. Junk production is toxic to people as well as other creatures, and most of it takes place in the poorest regions.
Sometimes I am lazy and take the car, even though I know to the roots of my soul we have more urgent uses for our last drops of crude oil than servicing my laziness. I see plenty of educated, relatively leisured people who accept plastic bags & disposable cups, throw stuff away for new stuff, and use lethal cleaning products when they are more or less aware that these deteriorate water and hence food supply – and are also aware that many people tonight are hungry. The persistent lack of awareness or as Lynne Twist puts it the “right not to know”, when it comes to the eco-results of our everyday Westernised actions, is also very inequitably distributed.
Hi – important issue… this brings home to me the importance of having real home ec classes in our public schools – learning about food choices and the consequences. Maybe then we’d get to a place where people will ultimately make better choices about what to put in their shopping carts. And it is not about judgement or blame, so much of it is that for so long we as a society didn’t know the consequences of our choices. Global warming is a good example, the first scientific measurements of it didn’t start cropping up until the 1970’s, but we’ve been on that road since the industrial revolution. Or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch…. which is largely composed of degrading plastics like bags… it wasn’t discovered until relatively recently. What makes changing behavior so hard is that current generations must make up for past generations that simply had less knowledge. So rather than just trying to convince people to change their behavior more than halfway into their lives – let’s also focus on building better habits in our kids through education.
You are so correct. The most intimate thing we do in life is consume. Think about it. We put something into our body that becomes a part of our body. Yet we have completely lost touch with what we are consuming. Same with communication. R U ROTFL? I’m not.
what an interesting discussion.
i remember the moment i ‘woke up’ and realised what was happening seed patenting, food supply, GM crops and corn syrup and its many disguises, knowing that…for whatever reasons… its cheaper to buy crap processed food than fresh locally grown veges and fruit- at this stage and for a lot of families trapped in a regular lifestyle of mortgage, kids and a life reliant on fossil fuels- money is short. saying that i really think it is a matter of education about growing bits and pieces of food yourself and i think by necessity very soon, changing lifestyles and this doesn’t happen overnight. perhaps most of us humans won’t voluntarily change behaviour unless absolutely necessary.
…..wonky left wheel on the trolley in isle 4 may weave you to a conversation with someone who is squirming over the price of baked beans – through discussion t a seed may be planted for change. just maybe.
love, compassion, patience and a ,small is beautiful, attitude in ones own life- heal thyself-love thyself.
‘messages from water’ taught me more than anything else i have ever experienced…thoughts and good intent as well constructive language can make a difference for change in many ways
yes be active, be compassionate, be loving. through education comes freedom.
A few years ago, I took my then 16 year-old son shopping at the supermarket. He hadn’t been to a supermarket in years, always opting to stay home with the remaining adult. He quietly observed and asked a few questions as to why I chose the organic canned tomatoes over the regular ones and why I constantly checked the labels. When we got to the checkout he noticed our trolley was not really full, just basic staples and some canned vegetables and yet there were people around us with overflowing trolleys. His comment was, “You know Mum, supermarkets are really aimed at people that don’t cook.”
Well said. :-)
How funny that I should click over to your blog due to your link on FB (oh small world, your superhighway is social media) due to a comment about your every other month shop at a supermarket and checking out the trolleys – and here you are, one year ago to the day doing the same thing!!