Raam Dev

Hello, future.

Is this sustainable for humanity?

The 'sustainable model' that I try to gauge myself against is that of equality for humanity. If it’s not sustainable for everyone, then it’s not sustainable.

When I find myself doing something on a regular basis, I ask myself the question, "Is this sustainable for humanity?" I try to imagine, to the best of my ability, replicating what I'm doing across all humans on earth and then I try to decide if that’s sustainable.

"Is this particular food I'm eating sustainable enough for all 7 billion humans to sit and eat the same meal with me today?"

"Is this method of transportation that I'm using sustainable enough for all 7 billion humans to ride it with me today?"

"Is this project or job or career that I'm pursuing sustainable enough for all 7 billion humans to pursue the same project, job, or career with me?"

"Is buying a brand new paperback book at the bookstore sustainable enough for all 7 billion humans to buy one with me?”

“Is what I’m creating or producing on a regular basis something that 7 billion others could create or produce alongside me?”

I keep asking myself this question, over and over: "Is this sustainable for humanity?"

It's almost impossible for me to know with accuracy what’s sustainable for everyone, but at least by asking the question and framing it in context of all humans I gain a better understanding and perspective around my lifestyle choices.

Can 7 billion humans consume meat while still maintaining a sustainable ecosystem for the planet? Nope. So clearly non-meat diets are the way to move forward.

Can 7 billion humans drive their own combustion-engine vehicle while still maintaining a clean environment and healthy planet? Nope. So clearly public and mass-transit systems are the better, more sustainable option.

I don’t know how all the pieces fit together. There are so many variables that go into answering such big questions. But that shouldn’t stop us from asking them. Simply asking the question always yields a feeling in one direction or another.

Applying a little knowledge and commonsense goes a long way towards guiding those feelings in the right direction. By asking the big questions and allowing their answers to shape our decisions, we’re far more likely to do things that make sense on a global scale.

A little over a year ago I began asking this question on a regular basis. It all started when I was purchasing a pair of minimalist running shoes online.

As I contemplated the $112 price tag, I began to wonder if such a choice made sense on a global scale.

Assuming everybody on Earth could afford such a purchase, could the Earth itself support the manufacture of that many shoes made of those same materials?

It quickly became obvious that given a scenario where all humans had to wear the same shoes, we would collectively find a much cheaper solution using materials that were already in abundance and which already needed to be reused.

This solution would maximize durability, allow everyone to make repairs and alterations to their footwear with the most basic tools, and ensure maximum ergonomic compatibility with the human body.

Did such a solution already exist? Certainly after thousands of years something as basic as footwear must have evolved to the point where it was sustainable, right?

I used the greatest resource of knowledge humankind has ever created and did a little research online. I learned about the Tarahumara, the native American people of northern Mexico who run hundreds of miles a week using sandals fabricated from old rubber tires.

The sandals simulate barefoot running, which I learned research is showing virtually guarantees injury-free running. We don’t need special shoes — we are literally born to run.

I’ve been wearing and running in my own handmade pair of huaraches for over a year now, making repairs and alterations as necessary and being quietly reminded with each step of that decision I made after asking the question, “Is this sustainable for humanity?”

If we all gauge our decisions against a backdrop of equality for humanity, then we will recognize the significance of our individual actions and those actions will naturally gravitate towards what makes sense for everyone.

It used to be that we were so disconnected from each other that it wasn’t possible to find globally harmonious solutions. It used to be that everybody would make decisions based on their local knowledge and access to resources.

But now, in a ever-growing global society where an increasing number of us have access to resources from anywhere on the planet and the collective knowledge of humanity, our individual choices matter more than ever.

How we choose to live, what we choose to do, the things we choose to buy and eat and consume, all of it has an ever-increasing impact on the rest of humanity and those of us affecting things on that global scale have a new responsibility to work towards what is sustainable for everyone.

To work towards a future of global social equality, we must start by making decisions that reflect a respect for that equality and we can start by asking the question, “Is this sustainable for humanity?”

Notes: Publishing for Readers

From Thom Chambers' The Micropublisher, Issue Two, comes this bit about publishing for readers:

What if your work continues not to land, not to have impact, even when you’re proud of it?

Well, when your goals are focused on the internal, on the things you can control, then you can react. It becomes a question of knowing what the right work is.

First, make sure your story is right. Are you publishing things that people want to read? Are you publishing for the right audience?

This comes back to starting with why and being authentic. When you stand for something, when you believe in something, you attract those who believe the same. Then, make publications that delight those readers. Rather than writing something and seeking out new readers for it, you write for your existing readers. Focus on delighting them, repeatedly.

If as publishers we're constantly focused on controlling the audience, then it's a lose-lose game. We can't control the audience. Instead, we should focus on what we can control: what's inside us. We should focus on speaking to readers, on thinking one-to-one and communicating with humans not statistics.

Notes: How will we interpret loss?

Is this not true for all of us?

Some of our dreams come true, others do not; some people stay close, others move away; some get sick and then better -- while others wither and die. Some people we love remain faithful and loving our whole lives, while others abandon or betray us. Relationships and friendships come and go, businesses succeed and fail, fortunes rise and fall, people we love will die, and we will grow old, get sick, and die. As William Stafford says, "Nothing we do can stop time's unfolding." In that inevitable, excruciatingly human moment, we are offered a powerful choice…;

Will we interpret this loss as so unjust, unfair, and devastating that we feel punished, angry, forever and fatally wounded -- or, as our heart, torn apart, bleeds its anguish of sheer wordless grief, will we somehow feel this loss as an opportunity for our hearts to become more tender, more open, more passionately alive, more grateful for what remains?

A passage from Wayne Muller's A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough.

Travel Notes: Left-side Driving in Australia

I could feel my brain resisting the change, like stirring molasses with a big spoon my brain pushed against the reality that I was forcing it to accept.

I drove in Australia for the first time today, a short 15-minute ride to the supermarket. But those few minutes felt like hours. When I stopped and got out of the car, my brain physically hurt, as if my brain had just run a marathon. I could feel the new synapses forming in what seemed like previously dead areas of my gray matter, like someone waking up from a coma and needing to relearn things that felt both vaguely familiar and all so wrong at the same time.

Everything that had become second nature from more than 14 years of right-side driving in the United States suddenly felt all wrong. The rearview mirror was on the wrong side, the gear shifter, the turn signal, the steering wheel -- all of it felt backwards. But not the gas and brake pedals: they were the same as in the States. Everything in the car was mirrored except those. Confusing! But there it was, all of it in front of me, awaiting my acceptance, asking me to embrace it.

And then when I started driving I knew there were others depending on my brain accepting these changes. Stay on the left side of the road!

It was tough. Left turns were right turns. Merges onto the freeway were made from left to right. The fast lane was now on the left instead of the right. Exits were always on the left. Rotaries — or roundabouts as they're more often called here — were particularly challenging to get correct. Cars went clockwise around them instead of counter-clockwise.

Everything felt wrong! It was the same weird feeling a right-handed person would feel when throwing a ball with their left hand.

But I pushed through this. I knew this was why I traveled, to feel my brain returning to its pre-adult state, to re-plasticize the hardened gray matter.

Day after day, I drove a little more each day. After one week of driving with a navigator in the passengers seat, I've now graduated to driving alone by myself. And then one day something strange happened: everything began to feel normal. It started to make sense. Left-side driving started to feel normal. And that was an incredibly freeing experience, so suddenly become mobily ambidextrous.

To remember which turns are yield turns, I've come up with an easy way to remember: whatever side of the car I'm sitting on, that's the side that is a yield turn. If I'm driving on the right side of the car, then right turns are yield turns. If I'm sitting on the left, left turns are yield turns.

But still I find myself occasionally mixing it up. When I’m told we’ll be making a right turn ahead, my brain identifies right turns with non-yield turns, which in Australia is actually a left turn. So I’ll hear right, but feel left.

But again, this is why I travel. To grow. To experience something new and unfamiliar. To push myself outside of comfort zones and over the edge into the unknown.

Knitting Life Together

If we're looking forward -- into the unwritten darkness of the future -- then how can we possibly expect to create something coherent and comprehensible in the present?

Should we not, then, be looking behind us, allowing the lantern we're holding onto (the present moment) to illuminate the steps that we've already taken and then use that knowledge to understand where we're going?

It seems almost counter-intuitive (walking backwards to understand where you’re going) until you actually think about it. I tried to come up with a good analogy and I found that knitting works well.

In knitting, two needles are used to stitch together yarn and create clothing or other items. The yarn usually sits bundled up in a ball somewhere on the floor or in a bag and is unwoven as needed.

Like someone knitting, our focus in life shouldn’t always be on where the yarn is coming from (the future), but rather at the point it's coming together in our hands (the present) and occasionally at what has already been created (the past).

Using what has already been woven together, we make small adjustments along the way, pausing every now and then to step back, take in the bigger picture, and use that to reevaluate our progress.

If at any point in time we don't like the direction we're going, we shouldn’t search furiously for answers in the darkness of the future — we shouldn’t try to make sense of jumbled ball of yarn. That won’t tell us anything.

The interesting stuff isn’t actually in the future at all; it’s in the past, the cumulative result of everything we’ve already done. The future simply represents the source of material from which we can weave together anything.

The most interesting point, the point that deserves the most attention — the point where all the magic happens — is the present moment. The story of our life comes together in our hands, in this moment, not somewhere on the floor in a heap of yarn.

Travel Notes: Flying to Australia

"I am in New Zealand... of all the places in the world, I am in New Zealand."

As I sat in the New Zealand International Airport lounge waiting for the departures screen to tell me which gate my flight to Australia was leaving from (in the area where the gate number for my flight should appear, it simply says "Relax"), I look around and feel the need to keep reminding myself that I'm actually here, in New Zealand, that place on the map that, until now, was really just a place on the map.

As my trip to Australia approached, I was asked several times what I was feeling. All I could say was that it didn't feel real. 

It's hard for me to comprehend how my physical body is going to move from one spot on the planet to an entirely different spot, across huge oceans and continents, in the matter of hours. Yes, I simply "fly across", but that doesn't feel simple to me. I'm in absolute awe with how that's even possible. I understand the science, but it feels like reality hasn't caught up with the science.

I look outside the airplane window and marvel at the wings, these giant metal structures that move and expand like a bird when landing, but manufactured by human beings, with materials and chemicals formulated by human beings, parts and pieces engineered, assembled, tested, and finally flown by human beings. 

An entire buildings worth of people, with multiple floors, carrying 100 tons of fuel and, on this particular trip, transporting 10 tons of asparagus from Los Angeles to New Zealand, some 6,200 miles through the air, like a giant, mechanical, human-made bird. And here I am in the air with all this stuff and all these people, 40,000 feet above the Earth, traveling at nearly 600mph, through an atmosphere that would certainly kill me a −57F.

How is any of this possible? And why do I feel like I'm the only one absolutely dumbfounded by it all?

A few hours ago I was in California and a few hours before that I was in New Hampshire. Now I'm in New Zealand, on my way to Australia! I can only imagine what Magellan or Christopher Columbus would've given to have this freedom, and how disheartened by the future they would feel if they had the opportunity to observe how easily people today take such fantastic things for granted. 

This isn't the future. This is the future and the past combined. This is now.

Giving the Gift of Giving

For a long time I resisted kindness and assistance when it was offered to me. If someone offered to help me in some way, I turned it down. I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want to be the person to inconvenience them, to take something away. I was always more willing to sacrifice my own time and comfort over taking it away from someone else.

I’m not sure when this began to change, but I do remember very clearly the idea at the heart of my decision to embrace receiving: It was the realization that the ability to give is a gift and as the receiver, I was enabling that gift by receiving it. If I take the opportunity away from someone—if I turn down their help or assistance or generosity when they offer it—I’m actually depriving them of the gift of giving.

So now instead of pulling away when someone extends a hand—when they offer to buy dinner or give me a place to stay for the night—I remember that turning down their offer would be stealing from them something that only I can give in that moment: the gift of giving. And when someone could use my help or generosity and I’m in the position to give, I remember that it doesn’t matter how little I have because giving is the gift that gives back.

This thinking has revolutionized both my ability to give and to receive. I feel good about receiving because I know that I'm actually giving even more back. And because I'm so willing to receive, I feel more willing to give.

Risk Being You

If you could erase everything you know about yourself, who would you become?

Imagine for a moment that you could let go of everything that makes up your identity: all your fears and self-doubts, all your past mistakes and experiences, all your family and friends, even the shape of your body and face, and all those weird things you don't like about your name.

Forget about what you look like. Forget about how you normally interact with people. Forget about how people usually respond to you and how you respond and act around other people. Forget what you think. Forget what you feel. Forget all of it.

Now imagine for a moment that you can start from scratch. You can recreate yourself to become anyone you like, a person with whatever personality and whatever traits you desire. 

If you've always wanted to be comfortable around other people, pretend for a moment that you suddenly gain the ability to be extremely relaxed and easygoing. Your confidence goes through the roof and you have no fear of judgement. You make friends easily and you have fun talking to strangers. When someone smiles and says hello, you not only smile and say hello back but you go out of your way to initiate a conversation because you're excited and intrigued about where it may lead and that alone feels worth more than being afraid.

If you've always wished you worried less and spent more time enjoying life and the company of those present, that you enjoyed doing things not because the timing was right but because they felt like the right thing to do, then pretend for a moment that you can suddenly embrace the joy of this moment with no doubt or hesitation, no questioning or analyzing, no reservation or delay.

If you've always wanted to speak your mind and be yourself no matter what others may think, pretend for a moment that in any given situation you will always say what's on your mind. You willingly open doors and you leave room for others to judge you because you're so confident in your own skin that it just doesn't matter. You'd rather let others know you for you — no matter what they may think — rather than let them judge you for who you're not.

If you've always wished that you didn't play it safe all the time, then pretend for a moment that in this newly created life all the characters and props that come with it will be wiped away soon and everything will start anew; it doesn't matter how risky the choice, how crazy the idea, or how absurd the potential outcome: they're all worth a shot because this is your only opportunity anyway.

Now recognize that none of this needs to be pretend.

You can start from scratch. Others who know something about you may hold onto what they know and believe, but you can let it all go.

Initiating conversations and talking to people always leads to more interesting and fun experiences.

Enjoying the company of those present and living day-to-day with a focus on what makes you happy and what opportunities lie ahead is always safer than doubting, over-analyzing, and waiting for the right moment.

Speaking your mind, leaving room for others to judge you, and not fearing the outcome of being yourself is always better than pretending to be someone you're not.

Taking chances on the things that feel right, exploring opportunities that could lead somewhere new, and believing in ideas that speak to you, is always worth any perceived risk; everything you know will turn to dust soon anyway.

Be the person you know you're supposed to be and stop pretending there are justifiable reasons to do otherwise. There is nothing worth avoiding who you are because who you are is worth more than anything you could risk.