St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

Can our Children Fix This?

BY HEIDI MCCRARY

“We’re screwed,” my husband said, watching the evening news featuring yet another fire overtaking a suburb on the West Coast. “There’s no coming back from this. We’ve really screwed up the earth this time.”

“No,” I replied, adhering to the number one rule in our house. Only one person is allowed to wallow in self-pity or outright terror at the thought of the world having a finite end date. This rule allows us to voice our fears without falling into a hole of despair. By voicing a counterpoint, we can maintain a hope that the world will go on and our place in it, intact, however simplistic or fictitious it may be. It allows us to sleep at night. “Our children will fix this,” I continued. “I have the utmost faith in them.”

Our children, what exactly have we handed them? A world that seems to be eternally on fire, where snowstorms are blasting areas known for housing palm trees, and ongoing heatwaves continue to overtake the Midwest in December. It’s scary, unnatural, and inevitable that we are not heading in a positive direction for world sustainability.

But I have faith…

If the current Pandemic has taught us anything, it’s this… We are more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. One friend of mine recently wrote on social media that going forward, our new normal will be a world less convenient. Gone are the days when we could travel without care, stores were open at all hours, carrying an endless supply of groceries and products, and garbage wasn’t piling up at a dangerous speed. But first, we must recognize how we got to this point.

How did we allow ourselves to become so complacent that waiting a second day on our Amazon delivery causes us a headache? How did we get to a place where showering with a simple bar of soap turned into pumping liquid soap from yet another plastic container? Where wiping down the kitchen counter with a sponge morphed into detoxing the kitchen with chemicallyinduced wipes? Where having our dinner shipped to us in a multitude of boxes with all the necessary parts is now commonplace for families?

What have we done? And more importantly, is it too late to change?

Author Jonathan Safran Foer sounded the alarms in his recently published book, “We Are the Weather.” In it, he simultaneously warns us to start the process of healing the earth and changing our ways while also letting us know that we’re too late to the party to change the trajectory of our carelessness. It’s a painful read and paints a picture of doomsday. Putting down the book, I didn’t know whether to change my ways FAST or simply start on my bucket list, knowing that our days are numbered. Looking at these two doors, I’ve decided to go the way of action and optimism. We can and must live with less. Less convenience, less plastic, less stuff. When you’ve reached the point where you need more containers to hold all your belongings, you have too much stuff. We don’t need more containers; we simply need to stop buying things we don’t need. While my generation may not hear the warning bells, our children are hearing them loud and clear. That is perhaps why the up-andcoming generation isn’t interested in fast cars that drink endless gallons of gasoline and why they aren’t buying massive houses equipped with a plethora of bathrooms and lawn sprinkler systems that spray unending streams of water.

I choose to believe the earth will bounce back, but only if we stop this carefree cycle of indulgence. I have faith in us and our children. In the words of a politician, I am cautiously optimistic. We can do better. And let’s hope our children learn from our mistakes.

Heidi McCrary

Heidi is a writer and a regular contributor to Moxie Magazine. Her novel, “Chasing North Star” is available at Kazoo Books, This is a Bookstore, and online wherever books are sold. Follow Heidi at heidimccrary.net and fb.com/HeidiMcCraryAuthor