Sometimes it feels like the world is out to thwart progress toward mindfulness at every turn, but every once in a while it provides a nudge in the other direction.
Since I have been living in Ireland these past few months, I’ve noticed myself adopting some new habits, encouraged to action by my environment.
Several of these fall into the category of being more mindful about energy use and reducing waste in general.
My apartment in Dublin has power outlets everywhere you could possibly want one (except the bathroom, but that’s another story). What’s different is that they don’t just turn on and off at the wall – each one has an individual on-off switch at the outlet itself. According to the eco-living brochure we were given, leaving unused outlets switched off saves a small amount of energy and money for our household, but adds up across the building, the city, the country. And most of our outlets are switched off most of the time.
Back to Chicago, where kitchen composting is a possibility, but not my reality. The city has 33 free drop-off locations and the compost goes into public ornamental and food gardens. I would feel good about myself if I used them, but the truth is that the friction in the system makes that unlikely. The closest drop-off is about a 15 minute drive, and my small place means that I have nowhere to store up even a week’s worth of scraps.
Compare that to Dublin. Nudge #1 was the countertop composting bin that was waiting for me. Not a cute one, but a signal that this is how to live. The important thing, though, was nudge #2. Down in the building basement, where I have to go to dump my garbage anyway just like in Chicago, there is a large composting bin. No friction, new habit.
Sometimes becoming more mindful is the result of adding a little friction, and sometimes taking a little friction away. These little nudges can register at first as an annoyance as changes often do. In my case, though, they accomplished what my best intentions to live more mindfully never did.