All Things are Connected

A long time ago, I had a folksy piece of painted slate with excerpts from a speech given by Chief Seattle in the 1800's. This was not my usual taste in decor items, but I found his words, "all things are connected" to be especially poignant and humbling, so I hung the slate up where I would see it every day. Seattle's entire speech is quite long, quite famous, and quite stirring, even though the translation with which we are familiar is of dubious origin. Indeed we cannot really know for certain if Chief Seattle truly uttered the following:


"I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive."

It doesn't seem such a stretch to imagine that Seattle didn't just abhor waste. He absolutely couldn't fathom it. Couldn't fathom it. Couldn't wrap his mind around it. Couldn't just play the devil's advocate on that one. It befuddled him. It shocked him. Why would you take a life for any reason beyond survival? And then he is practically an apologist for his own tribe's need to hunt. "Offing" an animal and not using it is shameful. It's plain wrong. And Seattle couldn't get why any reasonable person would be so, well, unreasonable, publicly flaunting some perverse, dark cruel streak.

Most of us are no longer in control of obtaining our food beyond going to the grocery store. Certainly a few people grow some pretty tomatoes or buy into a co-op that raises livestock for consumption, but few of us are truly "off the grid", so we have to be responsible in the simplest way; Just do not waste anything. Allow me to repeat: DO NOT WASTE ANYTHING. Please only buy what you need, meaning the necessities that your family can and will eat to maintain their health. Please use up everything you buy. Please freeze or share what you cannot finish. No molded-over cheese in the drawer because you bought 4 pounds of it on sale and everyone was sick of it after the first pound. No chicken bones in the trash when all you have to do is boil them up for a while for a first-class broth which can be frozen for the wicked head cold you get every year. No lovely steaks that you know deep down you will never make time to cook.

Committing to minimize waste will have an obvious effect on your wallet. If you are using what you have and not pitching stuff just to go buy more allows you to hang on to more dollars. Minimizing waste is also good for the environment. Even if you recycle (and thank you for that) just physically having less stuff to recycle is far kinder to the planet than having three gargantuan blue recycling bags on your curb every trash day. And you may not see it right away, but I think that committing to minimize waste will also eventually have an effect on your soul. I know it sounds a little hippy-dippy and laughable, but really, wouldn't it be better if no chicken died in vain and that you helped toward that end? OK...you might agree with me a little more if I talked in terms of veal....right? Nobody wants a cuddly, knock-kneed toddler of a cow to lose his short life for naught. So, even as we eat livestock, we can demonstrate some degree of respect, by making sure that their whole being has fortified the continuation of life, and not that they were wasted (like those buffalo shot from a passing train) by rotting in the way-back of the fridge because we're just not in the mood to eat that tonight. Seattle would be pleased if we all tried just a little bit harder.

And he was arguably prophetic when he pointed out:
"All things are connected."

And as a New Year is upon us, I hope we can remember this now and for all time.