What’s your happiness quotient?

The last year has seen a significant change in the mindset of people towards sustainability. Even though the global crises of climate change have been at the forefront of concern for many of us for years now, the real push in considering climate issues and geological changes, as a threat to the human race has come about in the past one and a half year. Covid-19 brought with it, a hurricane of global disaster that has put the matter of sustainability of “sustainability” at the forefront since 2019. Whether natural or lab-made, the resultant catastrophe, this global pandemic created, in the name of the Coronavirus, has us on our knees even today.

We all have been shaken by its severity and the value of sustainability has seen a new awakening in most of us. Sustainability or Eco Living as some may refer to it has caught not only Global headlines but also macro-level mindfulness. 

• We have become more conscious of our choices, choices that lead to impacting the environment in more than one way.

• We have started rethinking, on the lines of consumption and choice of products.

• We have started recycling more than ever.

• We are choosing to refuse the things that we believe will hurt the environment.

• We are also trying to reduce the consumption, considering our recent learnings from the acute scarcity of products in terms of low supply against the demand and the aspect of our freedom being restricted to our homes.

• And we are repairing our stuff with all our hearts. This process of repairing has stemmed from two things.
  1. Low product availability.
  2. An opening of the Pandora box of memories and feelings attached to things in general throughout this period of lockdown.

So basically what have we been doing?

We have been getting better at using things. We have been thinking wiser. We have been choosing well. We have been refusing that’s not good for the earth, the earth that we want to see and our children to travel. We have been supporting that’s Eco to our Living. We have been attempting a “Sustainable life”. Believe me or not, we have been, in one or the other way!

Hearing about the word sustainability might seem a bit overwhelming. And many a time it is. But if you look deeper into your act of living that has been the last one year, you will realize that you have been quite sustainable all along. That you have tried your bit to make changes in your lifestyle to make a better place to live and sustain in.

And hasn’t that made you a tad bit happier? Given you a sense of satisfaction that somewhere, you are paying back to nature. And playing your little part? Absolutely. This is a proven fact that those who adopt sustainability, are more satisfied and happier with their lives. You make hundreds of decisions each day, and knowing the impact of those decisions on our ecosystem, is the first step. The second step is to just choose well. Where, both these steps meet, is the sustenance of “Sustainability”. 

SUSTAINABILITY: A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

More than societies, sustainable living starts with individuals or, collectively converting into a social change, and then going up to the level of countries that eventually claim to be sustainable. But that’s a long-distance ballgame. Sustainability is truly a bottom-up approach, not a top-down. Having said that, the essence of sustainable living is a combination of a push from the top, and a pull of that philosophy at the bottom. 

This means the system makes eco-friendly and sustainable products available to people and the people make a conscious choice to opt for them over non-sustainable variants available in the market. There are various aspects, that influence our scale of eco-ness, like how much sustainability affect us? or how much reduction we are willing to make in our consumption? or how much time we are sparing for reusing, recycling, and repairing? OR how much we are willing to pay for Sustainability. 

In our modern-day fast-paced life, what we are willing to do, how much we are willing to pay and what changes we are willing to make in our lifestyle, will eventually determine the “scale of our sustainability”. This of course stems from the ease, functionality, and efficiency a product/material provides us.

The idea to be happy is that we not only make decisions in our day to day life that are “sustainable”. But ones that are sustainable as well as possess the capability of maintaining our level of happiness.

We are living in a Covid era. Gone are the days that asked us to take small steps to changes. It’s time to leap to a sustainable future. Time to make sustainable choices and adopt sustainable living for happier earth and happier us!