What does your green mean in '09?
Saturday, January 10, 2009 | 2 comments | Related : Green Luxury
As hopes of global economic growth seem a thing of the distant future–how do bleak financial forecasts affect your personal growth? How does self-worth fluctuate with financial worth? What does your green mean to you? For many this is an opportunity to pare down to a more essential and vital way of living. To re-evaluate our own “portfolio of fundamentals”— love, work, family & friends. The challenge is to cut our losses and embrace more productive ways of valuing life while perhaps mourning a sense of security and an imagined future. To ‘09, may it be your greenest ever.
I continue to be frustrated by high end designers raising their prices season after season in this economy. Clothes, shoes and handbags have become astronomical in high end department stores and continue to rise every season! People cannot afford them and I feel it is disrespectful to the consumer when the country is in this financial state to push these products and prices. Customer service across the board in most industries especially in resturaunts had reached an all time low. There was so much business because the economy was thriving that you just could not get descent service! So despite the troubling times now and ahead I believe some good change is starting to take place. People are rethinking the value of their dollar and are spending more time at home with the people that matter. I for one am happy that businesses are catching on to the concept of proving good service because there’s not an endless supply of customers. They are actually having to work for their business and now when you go out to eat you can have a nice time and feel your business is appreciated. I also will be changing the way I spend money on luxury brand items. I feel a huge sense of relief because these times have forced me to re-think how I live my life and what I take for granted. I will be using this time to explore a greener lifestyle and working around the house to clean and oraganize. I have recently discovered your magazine and look forward to subscribing. I have been taking up cooking meals at home and enjoying our yard. Perhaps it’s time to start planting a garden!! Now more than ever for me is about getting back to the basics that create and maintain real happiness…..Thank you for your publications!
Green for me has been a 20-year exploration of successful demonstrations around the world, practicing thinking as a natural Being participating in a whole systems design for life on earth: I travel globally with my own hot cup and use it often for yogurt and fruit on the run, and tea or water in my waist pack for three-mile walks; I marvel at how many cups I’ve saved in the 5 years I have carried the same orange hot travel mug with a black lid, from Java in Sun Vally, Idaho, even though it has a small crack from when it fell on a rock while I was trimming bamboo WWOOFing in Australia. (Willing Workers on Organic Farms). I have worked as a globe-trotting writer/photographer as well, and I find great intelligence brewing all over the planet at the health food stores and localizing communities that are integrating their diversity around a Local Unified Vision everywhere. As it should be, it is. Let the world that is self-extinguishing in its falseness melt into the presence that is pure love, that is life now, here for us all. I am breathing in gratitude for our evolution. Blessings, Peace & Aloha from Maui, Claire Kellerman KLARITY Permaculture Design & Arts, Maui, Hawaiian Kingdom