Speak Out

Frustration

by Sarah McDonough, SUNY Cortland, May 29, 2008

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It’s been three and a half months and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve thought about a lot of new things and a lot of things I used to think about in a new light. It’s been the most tumultuous semester for me bar none both personally and academically, and some might think that means I’ve found some sort of spiritual solace, or the light at the end of the tunnel but I haven’t. I’ve come to one major conclusion: I’m really freaking frustrated.

I can’t understand why things are the way they are on so many levels and in so many aspects of life, and it all ties together to result in my frustration. I’m confused, I’m distraught, and I have a million questions running through my head, and all I want is for all of it to be resolved, to suddenly become clear and make sense. I’m not looking for a happy ending, just understanding. I’m hoping that as I explore my frustrations I’ll find some small piece of the clarity I’m longing for. I hope because I can’t live with despair.

From what I’m told, once upon a time, the earth was perfect, or as close to perfect as it could be. The land was vast and untouched—unpolluted, unharmed, perfect. The same was true of the waters. There were no creatures with a desire to tame the earth and make it their own; everything just was.

As time went on earth’s creatures began to evolve and with that came their ability to have and eventually develop thoughts. Some say this is the part in the story where mankind became the most intelligent creature on earth and learned to protect himself from all of earth’s dangers and survive for thousands of years. I say this is the part where mankind screwed the earth by deciding to slowly destroy it and eventually leave it for dead. I think happy thoughts.

As I understand it, mankind began to adapt to their surroundings, finding ways to shield themselves from weather, predators and the like. They discovered the use of fire to keep warm, scare those creatures they deemed lesser than them, and eventually clear out mass amounts of land for group settlement. Progress, that’s what they called it.

Somewhere along the line the wheel came into play and from there on out it was easy riding. Things were built faster and transported easier. Life was good.

My problem with all of this is I can’t figure out where or when it was that mankind stopped giving a damn about the environment, the earth, that which allowed them to live one more day. Were they always ignorant to the natural world’s well being or was there just a general consensus to not pay attention and just “use what the Good Lord gave ‘em?”

Nobody seems to recognize a good thing for what it is unless it’s not actually theirs and they are left to pine for it. Maybe they’ve had it and taken it for granted and once it’s not there anymore to ignore a new light is shed and suddenly they can see it for all it’s worth. Or maybe they just never took the time to notice. For as long as I can remember I’ve been taught the basics about taking care of our planet. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s engrained in my brain. I always remember Earth Day because it’s April 22nd and my birthday is February 22nd so I remember any and everything that occurs on the 22nd of any month. I’m weird. I can’t tell you when Arbor Day is though. I just know that from at least as early as elementary school, if not earlier, I was given various lectures on how to save the environment. Our class gift when moving from elementary school to middle school would be planting a tree out back behind the school by the playground. It was always presented as a very simple concept: one person makes a difference. I think my second and third grade teacher even wrote a song about it, something to the effect of “we can make a difference in this world, yes you and me…” I can’t remember the next line or any of the song. I know it rhymed though.

The thing is, as long as I’ve had the idea in my head that I personally can make a difference, I’ve questioned it. For a while I’d patrol the street I grew up on with my friends and scold them if they littered, but then I got to a point where I thought “hey, maybe it’s ok if no one’s looking,” and I’d start dropping gum wrappers or soda cans here and there. I felt a nagging guilt whenever I did it but I learned to just ignore that for a while.

It was in high school that I really began to try to “make a difference.” I went through a phase my junior year where literally the only thing I ever drank was water, which one would normally deem a good habit except I would use one water bottle for days at a time; I’d drink the entire bottle during one class period, refill it in the hallway in-between classes, and then continue the cycle throughout the day. Needless to say, I peed a lot that year. I was perfectly content with my habit until my Environmental Science teacher (after suffering through Regents Biology and Chemistry there was no way I was going to take Earth Science, Environmental Science was the easy, non-Regents version) gave our class a lecture about how it is unwise to continually refill plastic water bottles—something to the effect of the chemicals in the plastic would begin to seep into the water. I don’t remember the specifics, I just know that I was supposed to look for a certain number in the center of the Recycling triangle on my water bottle to find out if my bottle was a safe bottle or not. Most bottles aren’t, so I stopped drinking water as frequently. Wait a minute, I was reducing my usage of plastic bottles, clearly reusing them, and when I was done I put them in the plastic bin my family uses to fill until the next grocery store run to return bottles and cans because our city doesn’t have a real recycling program.

Hold on, what? No recycling program? How does that make sense? How can I make a difference if the city I live doesn’t even deign to really recycle? Makes no sense.

It wasn’t until I came to college that I saw actual recycling bins lining the hallways and classrooms, and not just for plastic bottles and aluminum cans but for paper and everything else as well. That made me happy. I chose a school that is actually trying to make that difference I’ve been trying to make. There was a catch though. Not that many people really seemed to be recycling. To this day I find water bottled in the garbage cans inside my roommates’ bedrooms and despite my complaints they have no intentions of breaking their bad habit. But I guess I wonder if it really is a bad habit.

So many studies talk about how harmful the recycling can actually be for the environment. It takes so long to break things down, rework them and then get them back out on the market as a recycled product. It just all seems like a massive headache to me. That’s not to say I don’t want to take part in it, I just want to find a way to actually make it a truly beneficial process and something more than just a select few people care about. It’s so frustrating to want to make real changes and find a way to dig ourselves out of this mess we’ve created over the years and have so many people just whole heartedly apathetic to the whole concept. I can’t understand not caring, I’m not capable of it, and it kills me to see people I know and love find it so easy not to care. At the same time I have no desire to be a preacher and to impose my beliefs on other people. I am a firm believer in free will. I love that everyone gets to make their own choices, I just hate that I can’t always understand some of those choices, and that goes way beyond my lack of understanding about why people seem to care so little about the environment.

I am not someone who considers herself a radical, or someone who has to be different or unique from everyone else. I accept that a lot of people have similar qualities and I think that’s probably what makes living life so fun in that we get to interact with people similar to us and establish deep and meaningful relationships with those people. Nothing bothers me more than people who consider everyone other than them “conformists” or “mainstream.” Please. We’re all mainstream in some way or another, so don’t act like it’s such a tragedy. Take the whole “going green” idea, for instance. Yes, I do want the masses to be motivated to give a damn, but things are getting a little too commercial even for me. Why is it that we need to make caring about the environment a cool thing to do in order to actually get people to care? You know what, scratch that, I’m not complaining. I over-analyze way too much and then wonder why despite my inability to stop hoping for something better there’s no rainbow in the sky. The thing that frustrates me about the whole world going green is the hypocrisy of it all. Hybrid cars are a great idea but the process of making the battery for a hybrid car is about as detrimental to the environment as fuel emissions have becomes in that they do not bio-degrade. The Carousel mall in Syracuse has put in special parking spots in their parking lots for customers who have gone green with their hybrid cars. Well first of all, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to put those with the cars that pollute closer to the mall so they don’t have to circle the lots in search of a spot as much? I’m just saying. Then there’s the fact that that particular mall has begun a massive remodeling that will involve building up more, therefore creating even less land space in the metropolis of Syracuse, but because they project has been dubbed a “green project” this is all trivial really. Really?

I guess I’ll never understand why something has to be a fad in order for people to invest their time in it. And then there’s the fact that most fads tend to fade out. So if “going green” is just a fad does that mean that the effort to fix the problems mankind has inflicted upon the earth won’t last? Where will that leave us? It’s cool right now to eat organic foods, use reusable bags when we shop and drive electric cars, but what happens when that’s not cool anymore? Do we just stop trying?

That’s a depressing thought. I really want to be positive about all of this, optimistic that there really will be a way to fix the problem, we really will find it and the whole world can find a way to beneficially coexist and not face inevitable doom. It’s a really cool thing to hope for, but all too often I’ve been told I need to keep my head out of the clouds and face reality, but the thing is, reality sucks.

I’ve learned that I’ll never stop questioning things. Why are things the way they are? It’s always a question with me. It’s only now that nature and what that may or may not be these days has become another question. I’ve been questioning the fate of the world for as long as I can remember; the fate of the world, the fate of myself. I question honesty and whether or not it really exists in human interaction, not just when I write or type words by myself. Putting these words in print definitely helps when I need to get things out, but only partially. Why can’t I, why can’t anyone I know, be truly and completely honest with one another? Why can’t any of us be completely natural with each other? Why is it such a taboo to be entirely and wholeheartedly honest with another human being? I can’t understand why I always feel so closed off on some level from the people I consider those I’m closest with.

I know I’m not the only cynic out there. Over the past few months I’ve heard plenty of people dose out just as much if not more sarcasm when it comes to the current state of the earth and mankind’s seeming lack of an effort to take care of things. I’ve had in- depth discussions in some of my classes about the going green fad and what it really means. I find comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who notices the total disaster that nature has become, but I find discomfort in knowing that so many other people seem to at least be taking notice of these problems yet doing nothing truly productive in terms of counteracting them. I guess I’ll never really get over this lack of action.

What can I do? I mean seriously, I need to figure this out. I need to stop whining so much and figure out the right thing to do in order to actually make a difference. I’d really love an epiphany right about now. If it could all just become instantly clearer while I continue to type, that would be fantastic; such a miracle. No? No epiphany yet? Damn, I was kind of hoping the power behind the Secret would come into play right now and the universe would find a way to instantaneously give me what I want. Maybe later.

The house I grew up in is right by the woods. Well, for a long time I really considered them to be like an actual forest, you know like the ones princesses have to travel through in fairy tales? I didn’t realize those forests were actually really vast pieces of land that went on for miles and miles. Do those kinds of forests even exist anymore? Anyways, these were really just woods. The hill in my backyard bottoms out and there’s a fence that separates our property from the woods. My great uncle lives next door and his driveway goes all the way down into the woods. It was only later on in my life that I learned that the whole entire paved pathway was not actually my Uncle Tom’s driveway, but became state owned property beyond the fence. When I was little though that concept did not exist to me and I firmly believed that because my uncle’s driveway led into the woods that the woods belonged to our family. I would tell all the kids that loved on my street that because we all loved to play back there. The thing about those woods though is I wouldn’t give them more than 2 miles’ worth of width, and maybe 20 yards beyond the pavement that connects to my uncle’s driveway lies the Lockport Town and Country Golf Course—nothing like those massive woods in the fairy tales, huh?

It didn’t matter that the woods were dinky to any of us kids who lived on my street. They were our woods, and after school and on weekends they provided us with ample amounts of games to play. When it was nice out sometimes we’d ride our bikes down the hill behind my uncle’s house, cut through the small woods space, and then speed down the hills of the golf course until one of us inevitably crashed into a tree (totally safe). In the winter we’d all go sledding down the hill, build forts in the woods and then sled some more at the golf course. It was awesome.

One Sunday in the fall a bunch of us kids decided we wanted to build an actual fort in the woods so we could have come super secret club that met out there…something to that effect. We thought we had hit the jackpot when we found old pieces of wood with nails and stuff still attached to them that were from an old tree fort some of the older boys on our street had built a while back but decided to tear down. While lugging some of the pieces back up the hill to a little leveled off clearing by my uncle’s garage the piece a friend of mine and I were carrying slipped out of my hands and little to my knowledge there was an old nail sticking out of the bottom that managed to land right in the center of my foot. Awesome.

I went home right away and tried to clean it out and get it to stop bleeding. My sock and my shoe were both once white and had become fairly dirt stained from tramping through the woods, but now they were both becoming a deep shade of red. I winced and whined and sat patiently in the bathtub as my parents made some sort of concoction that was supposed to clean the wound out properly. The local hospital is, no lie, around the corner and three blocks down from my house, but I adamantly refused to go in to have my foot checked out. Other than my all too frequent trips to the gift shop in order to stock up on candy and Bop magazine with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or JTT as his loving fans referred to him, on the cover I had never been, and still have never been, to the hospital for any type of personal injury or sickness aside from the day I was born. And to be clear, I have no intention of ever needing to be admitted as a patient until the day I give birth, and even that’s up for question. My parents feared the possibility of me needing a tetanus shot but I didn’t care, I wasn’t going.

I’ve had all of my required shots at my physicals over the years, and I’ve given blood enough times now to know that if something horrible had gotten into my blood stream that day somebody would have noticed and told me by now. Or at least I hope that’s true… It didn’t matter to me though that I got hurt playing in the woods because those were my woods, they were my safe haven, and I wasn’t about to give them up because a measly nail decided to fall into my foot.

A few years later when I was in the fifth grade, a few of us kids from the street were outside and noticed a few big yellow construction vehicles making their way down my uncle’s driveway and into the woods. We were stunned. What could possibly be going on down there? After we saw the workers leave we ran down into the woods and saw the ugly yellow machines parked down there. They had begun clearing some trees. We were enraged. How dare they try to destroy our woods! Didn’t they know how important those woods were to us?

We began kicking the trucks and throwing rocks at them. We ran up the hill to our homes and reconvened with paper and markers and tape and began writing lots of what we believed to be strongly worded, threatening notes for the workers to find the next day and understand that they were not welcome in our woods. There was no way we were going down without a fight. We ran back up the hill after decorating the trucks with our signs and notes and asked my uncle what was going on. Why was he letting these people destroy our woods? He told us the woods didn’t belong to us, they belonged to someone else and the person who owned them wanted to make more room for parking at the country club and in order to do that they needed to clear the woods and begin paving from the back of the club to the area we had so frequently played in for so many years. Who the hell did these people think they were!?

The next day, the man in charge of clearing the woods came after his workers had called him and told him about our crafty signs. He was none too impressed with our attempt to fight the man and save our woods. He spoke to my uncle who relayed the message that if we continued to prohibit the workers from doing their job peacefully the police would get involved. That immediately sent shockwaves through everyone. We were little kids, how were the police going to yell at us for standing up for what we believed in like we were so often taught to do. It didn’t make sense, but it scared enough of us into not going back down in the woods while the trucks were still down there.

Eventually the man in charge of the “clear the woods” project decided to sell his property to the state, and there were no more efforts to clear the woods. That may seem like a victory in some senses, but the woods I knew and loved had become an entirely different environment with so many of the trees that once marked different pathways for our daily adventures wiped out. We’ve all grown up and gone our separate ways now. A fair number of the families of the kids I used to play with have moved off the street, some of those kids I used to play with have kids of their own now—it’s crazy. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even say once a year, I’ll walk down into the woods for a little bit. It’s never been the same though and on the rare occasion that I do go back and walk down there I feel lost and confused and a whole lot of nostalgia for the simplistic days when we were all still little, all still friends, and all still played in the woods.

That’s not what matters to me anymore though. What I think of now is how brave we were for a whole day. We all banded together and made a solid effort to fight what we knew was wrong. I want that. I want to be 10 years old again and unafraid to speak my mind. I want that courage back so I can find a way to rally the masses and we can work together in order to restore what’s left of nature in this technological world. I need to find a way to get that courage, and I will, I just hope it’s not too late when I finally do.

So that’s where I’m at for now. I’m still learning, I’ll never stop of course, but in specific terms I’m learning to think a lot less about myself and my petty college girl problems and a lot more about the greater good of mankind. Is technology really as great is it’s cracked up to be, or is it just a way for humans to speed up the process of destroying the earth and all things natural? I still can’t answer that question, but it’s a question that’s become a lot more important to me than whether or not my roommate drank my last bottle to spite me even though I was really hung-over last week and could have potentially killed for some ice cold water. I’ve accepted that answers aren’t always available or even in existence and solutions to problems can’t always be found by going to some sort of problem solving workshop in which you are taught how to handle stressful situations and manage accordingly. It’s a small step in the right direction, I think, but an important step nonetheless.

I don’t know if any of what I talk about makes sense, but I do know that it feels good to talk about it. Knowing that at least one person has some insight as to how I think and feel when it comes to certain issues comforts me. Total and complete intimacy scares the hell out of me but I long for it regardless. I’m in love with all things natural, and I’ve come to accept that despite the varying definitions people come up with, for me nature will always be something completely untouched and unaltered by mankind. Someone can argue that nothing in the world is natural anymore and to that I say go ahead and argue. Is my definition simplistic? Sure. A bit too romantic? Without a doubt, but it’s the way I see it and I don’t care to deal with anyone who wants to tear down my desire to think with my head in the clouds. It’s a lot more fun that way.

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