Edamommy’s Vegan Diary: Feeling Guilty
I was making my family some brownies the other night and the two of them would have eaten the whole batch if I hadn’t had a sugar intervention.
Here’s where the nickname came in.
I looked over at my daughter and she had a streak of brownie goo which connected her two eyebrows. The resulting name (which I won’t utter in front of her)?
Unibrownie.
I think it’s interesting the way we label everything and everyone. I was uneasy being a vegan mainly because I wasn’t sure I could live up to the regulations associated with the name. Would people judge me for wearing leather shoes? Or scrutinize my beverages? So, I’m not a big fan of labels.
I think that might be the key to something the trendsters are calling green guilt. You try really hard to recycle, compost, reduce waste, carry a water bottle, eat local, eat plants, grow your own…but then you get to the gym and forget the water bottle. Or you jump on a treadmill and feel guilty because the thing is plugged in. It should be the other way around, right? If you pedal, run, step or walk, shouldn’t you be generating electricity?
My green guilt comes from my house, mainly. I am desperate to install solar panels, get rid of my lawn with attractive moss and groundcover, have a huge and bountiful garden (impervious to deer and bunnies), get a new eco-mattress for every bed and ditch the rugs for renewable wood floors. But, it’s not in the budget in the short-term. And, you have to remove things which have to be recycled, disposed of or somehow evaporated.
We do our best.
Tags: bountiful garden, compost, eco, generating electricity, solar panels, vegan, water bottle, wearing leather shoes, wood floors
June 5th, 2008 at 7:26 am
If mommy-guilt is an irksome gestational condition, GREEN-mommy-guilt will put you in the hospital on bedrest. With a corn-plastic bedpan, OF COURSE.
Although blanket labeling is a potentially self-damning cop-out, I do NOT agree with Eckhart Tolle (and Oprah, too!) when he says, in a A New Earth (a title which falsely & immediately calls to mind an environmental tome, no?) that “the quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, the more deadened you become…”
I believe that “verbally sorting” is an important way of understanding and (hello) ENJOYING our world (”paper, plastic, glass, foreheads bearing confectionary goo”), and I am sick, sick, sick of people playing the “Oh heavens, it’s a STEREOTYPE” card. Someone I admire very much recently introduced me to the term “green-washing” (which I assumed was an organic cleaning method…), which implicates those who posture at being more green than they actually are. While I’m sure there are plenty of those that green-wash—most of us are just doing our best, learning as we go.
Here’s another label for you, and one of my favorites: “Eco-Elitist.”
During your next wave of green guilt, remember that none of these savvy, almost prefessional greensters leapt fully formed from Athena’s skull. At some point they had to learn. And the corollary: do their best.
June 6th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
It makes me think of a new theme song - Almost Green (instead of Almost Blue). Does it seem odd that both Elvis Costello and Diana Krall recorded this song? Seems like a married couple might want to avoid that comparison.
Almost green
Flirting with this disaster became me
It named me as the fool who only aimed to be
Tag - you’re it.
November 20th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
some attention on these types of products. I like a organic lifestyle for my life.