sustain yourself
Yesterday I attended a really interesting event entitled “Change for Change” sponsored by the Black and Green class at Boston College. The event featured spoken word segments from Rudy Cabrera, a renowned Poet from Boston area and AMAZING food made from Fair Trade bananas provided by various culture clubs. Sidenote: the sugar fried bananas from the Philippines were too good and I can’t stop thinking about them. If you ever get a chance to try them I suggest that you do. They look like this:
Sugar Fried Bananas = YUM
So anyways, back to my point….A video presentation put together by the class discussed the important issue of sustainability for farmers outside of the United States who grow and harvest bananas and other crops and receive compensation that is much, MUCH lower than the cost of production. (As soon as I can cop the video from someone in the class I will post it up for you to see!)
So why choose bananas for the initiative?
Because people in the United States fucking love bananas, that’s why! We go bananas for them!! The United States alone consumes more than 6.4 billion pounds of bananas per year. That is a LOT of bananas. *Cue the Gwen Stefani track*
So what is the big deal anyway?
All bananas are not created equal!
Most bananas are sold by small farmers to multinational corporations, a process that currently requires them to go through various levels of intermediaries. Corporations such as Dole and Chiquita control over 50% of the banana trade and many own large banana farms that are dependent on the work of small farmers. Grocery stores and food distributors in the United States can afford to offer low prices for bananas because they generally buy them from these corporations in bulk. So just think of it like going to Costco, and only getting bananas. Money trickles down from the large corporations through the intermediaries until whatever is left over is given to the farmers on the bottom. Everyone else in the process is rewarded by a high profit margins, but to support these profit margins of higher-ups farmers can be paid as little as $3 per day on Non-Fair trade farms. This amount is barely enough to support one person, let alone a family of people as is the case for many of them. The farmer’s grievances also include poor labor conditions and unsafe exposure to pesticides that runoff into major water sources and can have been known to cause infertility, cancer, and even death. Now ain’t that some shit!
So then what is Fair Trade?
Fair trade is a social movement comprised of many organizations with a market presence that encourages stability, sustainability and community for farmers and producers in developing countries. The efforts of the Fair Trade movement have urged producers who are unfairly compensated for non-fair trade goods to negotiate better, more “fair” trade agreements for themselves. They also support producer’s efforts to maintain their health and demand that the companies they work for develop safe work environments. Farmers and other producers who partner with Fair Trade work to cut out the intermediaries between themselves and the corporations that buy and distribute the goods. By making themselves more market competitive the farmers can demand wage increases and other improvements. Fair Trade also works to raise awareness of the sustainability issues that affect producers in developing countries and to seek advocates for their movement to support Fair Trade goods whose distribution must meet certain quality standards designed with the producers in mind.
So what does this have to do with me?
The initiative to have Fair Trade bananas sold on Boston College’s campus was started by students who care. Supporting such a worthy cause teaches us to not only be empathetic to the social and economic well being of others, but also disciplines us to become CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS, who are aware of how the money we spend is being distributed. Right now in our campus dining halls we pay about $1 for a banana, and I can bet that no one has any idea how many people get a portion of that dollar or how much is given to the farmers who produced the banana. Our school’s initiative suggests that just adding $.025 to the price of every banana purchased through a Fair Trade distributor will ensure that farmer’s will receive a 12% increase in their earnings. And this is just a feasible limit that we have set for ourselves; A little bit higher and we could increase their earnings even more. I think it is really sad that we can spend $4 and some change on a Smart Water in the cafeteria, an amount that is exponentially greater than what we would spend filtering our own water from the tap. That price for one bottle of water is greater than the daily wages of some farmers, and that money could provide a 12% increase in daily wages for 16 farmers. This is a just one example of Fair Trade initiative started at one school by a few groups of concerned students and faculty. The concept so simple that you couldn’t even pretend not to understand if you tried.
With this knowledge of how even the smallest amount can make a difference, I implore you to start supporting a cause that is greater than yourself. A little effort can go a long way in this case.
Shoutout to Hannah LePage (you can visit her blog at www.weareindigo.net or follow her on twitter @indigogirl32) and my roommate Wintanna for bringing such an important issue to my attention.
everyday
I’ve always been a huge fan of electronic dance music, so for your listening pleasure I have one of the most recent releases by Rusko, a popular dubstep music producer and DJ from West Yorkshire, England.
And as if that weren’t enough for you, here is a sick remix of the song by Netsky, who is a Belgian drum and bass producer.
I think I’m partial to the original *kanye shrug*, but which do you like better?
doing me better
This poem entitled “doing me better” is a little something slight that I wrote today. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get back into my writing steeze and I’ve decided that it’s probably best for me to start off by developing some ideas that I’ve already played with. I think that the structure of this poem is a little different from what I’m used to, but I’m trying to open myself up to exploring different styles of poetry and prose. So I hope that you enjoy it for what it is.
“doing me better”
If I had known how hard it would be to love you,
I would look in the mirror,
stare deep into my eyes,
and accuse myself of being too much of a good thing.
I would have closed my heart and opened my eyes
to see that I was only receiving a part of you;
And that the complexity of our love
was just me giving of myself
And being all the love that we could ever need.
I could criticize myself for having love so real
That I turned away from my own worth to invest in our facade.
But instead I’ll just apologize,
To myself that is,
For thinking that a selfish man like you could be good to someone like me,
When in all honesty,
I’m too good for my own damn self.
I could laugh out loud now
Thinking about the times I spent crying over your exploits
Because you were having my cake
and eating theirs too.
Knowing all the while that I was responsible for the best recipe,
I started giving you less until eventually,
I just stopped giving you shit.
And taking your shit at all.
I knew that I had all of the right ingredients,
and that I could be my best self
with someone who wants me
and would choose my cake among a thousand others
without hesitation.
Oh yeah, and he would prefer chocolate over vanilla too.
It crossed my mind to be that bitter name-calling bitch
with sharp words for every moment of loneliness and emotional pain,
But I think I prefer to only grit my teeth when I’m taking shots
and having good sex with someone who isn’t you.
I could kill myself for submitting to you
because of all of the things I thought you were
and be redeemed in my realization that
everything you are not only magnifies
everything that I am.
I could stare at me in disgust
at how much I owe to myself for giving you
so much credit
for the love that I loaned your ass.
If I only could have seen
that there was nothing positive that I didn’t put there,
I would have ended up spending less time
thinking about where we stood
and more time
trying to figure out how to move on to the next.
Had I known that your best would be my worst
I would have done good all by myself.
breakdown
Have you ever loved a song just for the lyrics? That’s how I feel about “Breakdown” by Mariah Carey At certain points in my life I thought this song was the mutha-effin truth in lyrical form.
Even though times have drastically changed, reading the lyrics now can almost put me in the frame of mind where I feel like having a good cry. Here’s a portion of it, the parts that really spoke to my heart.
“Breakdown”
You called yesterday to basically say
That you care for me boy but you’re just not in love
Immediately I pretended to be feeling similarly
And led you to believe it was O.K.
To just walk away from the one thing
That’s unyielding and sacred to me
Well I guess I’m trying to be nonchalant about it
And I’m going to extremes to prove I’m fine without you
But in reality I’m slowly losing my my mind
Underneath the guise of a smile gradually I’m dying inside
Friends ask me how I feel and I lie convincingly
‘Cause I don’t want to reveal the fact that I’m suffering
So I wear my disguise ’til I go home at night
And turn down all the lights and then I break down and cry
So what do you do when somebody you’re devoted to
Suddenly just stops loving you and it seems they haven’t got a clue
Of the pain that rejection is putting you through
Do you cling to your pride and sing “I will survive”
Do you lash out and say “How dare you leave this way”
Do you hold on in vain as they just slip away
Well I guess I’m trying to be nonchalant about it
And I’m going to extremes to prove I’m fine without you
But in reality I’m slowly losing my my mind
Underneath the guise of a smile gradually I’m dying inside
Friends ask me how I feel and I lie convincingly
‘Cause I don’t want to reveal the fact that I’m suffering
So I wear my disguise ’til I go home at night
And turn down all the lights and then break down and cry
positive personal expression
You can’t force people to change who they are.
And there are certain instances where you feel like you can’t even tell them about themselves because they’re so caught up in their own selfishness and set in their selfish ways that they probably wouldn’t be able to really hear what you’re trying to tell them even if they’re actually listening.
So how do you deal with the selfish people who can’t get out of their own way?
The simple answer would be that you don’t. But as I said in my previous post, negative people are always going to exist, and they are always going to be around you so you can’t just spend your whole life avoiding them. And sometimes they’re going to be the people who you feel like you care about the most. You can literally drive yourself into madness trying to get someone to understand how you feel and why you think they’re wrong, hoping that they will make the necessary changes and employ some act right into their lives.
But from personal experience, I’ve realized that you can yell yourself into the ground trying to get someone to be who you think they should be and act the way you think they should act. I recently confronted someone I considered a close friend about their effort – or lack of effort – in their participation on my birthday. When I talked to them I asked them why they would choose not to be present knowing that it is a special day for me. The conversation didn’t go anything as I had planned because I ended up getting visibly upset and literally tried to force them into feeling like they were wrong for not being there for me even though I’ve been there for them.
I feel like if there’s any particular day of the year that you should put aside whatever you have going on to acknowledge someone who has been extremely important in your life, it is that particular day. I guess there are exceptions of course. Sometimes you forget, sometimes you feel like you have other important things going on, which is somewhat understandable (Then I would argue that maybe you’re not really friends). But I think that if you are aware of the situation and what it would mean to them for you to be present on their birthday, then it is your responsibility as a friend to be there for them in the best way that you can.
I only use this example because it is the most recent and relevant to me. I’m almost positive this post will raise a couple of eyebrows with people wondering if I am talking about them because I certainly had inspiration. But I am honestly not trying to call out any specific person. This post could refer to any number of people.Instead of calling people out, I’d like to use it as a way to relate my current experiences with selfishness to you.
Instead of allowing myself to completely enjoy my day, I got a little caught up on the few people I deemed important who weren’t there for me when I felt like they should have been. I made some effort not to let it taint my birthday weekend, but as I look back on the weekend in its entirety I realize that in some ways it did, hence the confrontation. But as I look back on how I handled the situation, I realize that I was wrong for trying to force my opinions on them. I think that I should have just expressed how I felt about their selfishness and left it at that. I think that it is ok to give people your opinions, but maybe you can’t and shouldn’t express them like they’re valid facts about the way human behavior should be. Even though yelling at someone or telling someone about themselves seems like the easiest way to get your point across and make yourself feel better, the reality is that you probably won’t get your point across that way, and you’ll end up just feeling worse about what happened because you’ve been dwelling on it by filling your emotional arsenal with reasons for condemning the other person.
So after completing this little evaluation about this particular topic of addressing selfishness in other people as it pertains to your life, I think that the answer to the question of how to deal is more complex than just do or don’t. I said don’t at the beginning because it seems pointless to confront someone by yelling at them or getting too worked up to be able to get your point across. Now that I’ve given a situation and can understand whew where I went wrong in that situation more clearly, I definitely think that it can be worth it to address someone who you feel is guilty of being selfish. I think it is possible to get your feelings across to people in a way that is not angry or emotionally destructive to you. Because when you feel a certain way about something that someone does or doesn’t do for you, you shouldn’t end up feeling bad about yourself and worse about the situation just because you approached them the wrong way.
So I think the lesson here is that you can’t force people to get out of their own way, but you can go about expressing how and why they made you feel some type of way while still maintaining a level of class and instilling a great confidence in your words. Even if you feel like they’re not really hearing you, at least you made the effort to get them to listen. And even if your little spiel doesn’t inspire them to change their core values, the end of the day you’ll end up feeling good because you know said what you had to say and you didn’t turn around and make yourself the ass in the situation.
So positive personal expression instead of forced change. Yeah….that sounds about right.
just a little perspective
I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so in the words of the wonderful Erykah Badu “keep in mind I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive ’bout my shit…”
It is an amazing thing when you realize that someone is tearing down walls you have built up for years, and has finally broken into the warmth and light of your soul. In some cases, it is even more so because the walls have been built up as high as you can see; and are reinforced with all of the internal strength and willpower that you possess, such that they have transformed into a daily reality…and you had forgotten that they were even walls at all.
If you have ever experienced emotional pain or sadness or anger caused by another person you have probably built up walls around yourself at some point. And those walls are likely constructed of every thought and every emotion you have ever had that made you feel less than happy or less like yourself.
With those walls of lingering emotional turmoil built up, it is nearly impossible to allow others to know your true self, even though there are those who truly want to learn. Your past troubles and your thoughts of them can be burdens on your memories. So instead of remembering those things that gave you joy and brought genuine laughter into your eyes, you are more likely to forget. The walls that you build up around yourself perpetually cast a dark cloud over your happiness and the experience of it.
Once walls so strong and so securely reinforced have been built up, it seems nearly impossible to give someone the power to break into your fortress and lead you out into the open air. It is both dangerous and frightening because with the great power of giving you new life also comes the terrible ability to cast you even further into darkness.
For some this is a risk that is too great to take. This is especially so if you have developed the habit of trying to rebuild yourself by picking up the pieces that you thought made you whole.
But with the start of a new year should come new feelings of optimism. And instead of trying to rebuild yourself from something that once was, I encourage you to start anew and take the energy your have spent rebuilding and divert it towards creating. If you are constantly stuck in the past, you will find that you are consistently being left behind, never quite where you need or want to be in your life. Breaking down your walls may be risky, but I think it is helpful to know that there are not always going to be people on the other side attempting to destroy you. And once they are broken down, and you realize how silly it can be to try and rebuild them to the heights they once were, you will begin to notice positive things and prevent yourself from only seeing the negative ones. Others will sense your newfound positivity and react positively to it.
It may have taken time to build up those walls, and it may take some time to break them down, but there is a whole year spread out for you to be able to start anew. There are going to be people around you who will probably never change, but there are going to be those who have changed and will encourage you to grow. And although you may not see it at first, eventually you will be able to point out things about yourself that have changed, and you will be able to ascertain different perspectives on life that you could not recognize before. To be able to grow to your fullest potential, you have to stand emotionally naked in front of others and make yourself vulnerable. The fact that your walls have been broken down has nothing to do with the strength of your foundation; and even without them, you will continue to stand. Use your strength to let others in. Use your wisdom to determine the difference between allowing them to stand with you, stand on you if they need support, and walk all over you. Be willing to receive strength from others and give your strength when it is necessary, but let go of those who are not able or willing to learn how to stand-alone.
With all of that said,
This year I am resolved to stop drifting in the past, to continue to break down my walls and move towards a positive future. I realize that there may be negativity and negative people around me, and that things may not always be what I want them to be in life. But as long as I maintain my current attitude on life and take inspiration from my own growth and my new found ability to allow others to help me grow, there will always be something positive in me.
Hopefully that brings you a little bit of perspective in the new year. Here’s a little music from my favorite artist to set this post and blog off right.
