Break out of the Heart-shaped Box this Valentine’s Day: Be Creative and Think Green
The best things
in life are free—except in the middle of February.
Valentine’s Day often feels like an odd “holiday” to me. It’s supposed to be a celebration of love, a gift that is freely given, yet we’ve been convinced that we have to spend a small fortune one day a year to show how much we love someone. Saint Valentine’s Day allegedly started as an observance of two martyrs, both named Valentine, who sacrificed their lives to help others. The observance had no connection with romantic love prior to a poem written by Chaucer in the fourteenth century. By the late fifteenth century, the emphasis of Valentine’s Day was on exchanging tokens of affection between lovers within the upper classes, the nobility, with no mention of the martyred saints.
I’m all for expressing affection for our loved ones. It would be a much kinder world if we practiced the underlying premises of Valentine’s Day—occasionally putting another person’s needs before our own and showing our loved ones that we care about them—every day instead of just one day out of the year. What leaves me increasingly cool towards Valentine’s Day is the excessive hype and commercialization that has transformed it into one more opportunity for an economy hooked on consumer spending to rake in billions of dollars[1].
The ability of the advertising industry to foster unrealistic expectations—not to mention anxiety about choosing or paying for the “perfect” gift—through carefully crafted story boards that depict ultra-romantic date settings and couples lavishing expensive gifts on each other is disconcerting. Yet even when we realize this, we don’t always know how to increase our immunity to the commercial hype and shut out the siren songs of our consumer culture. I don’t know about you, but I’ve realized, over the years, that as much as I appreciated them the gifts or the dinner dates given from a sense of obligation just aren’t as sweet as the unexpected gifts or spontaneous expressions of affection.
Considering that love is supposed to be freely given, there is a mighty high price tag attached to proving—er, I mean demonstrating—our feelings for our nearest and dearest on February 14th, and I’m not referring just to the financial cost of buying presents or paying for an extra special date night[2]. How many of us stop to think about the environmental and social costs attached to many of the Valentine’s Day gifts that we buy?
Make Valentine’s Day planet friendly and fantastic: Give gifts that are fair trade and Organic.
What with the cards, wrapping paper, flowers, clothes, electronic gadgets, chocolate, and jewellery, Valentine’s Day has big feet in terms of the carbon and ecological footprints it leaves behind. The social costs—economic inequalities, health problems, and social injustices—associated with producing many of the traditional Valentine’s Day presents(e.g., chocolate and flowers) are also sobering. The darker side of cacao farming has been well documented by Carol Off in her book Bitter Chocolate.
It isn’t just cocoa production that is plagued by distasteful labour practices. Many of the labourers in the floriculture, textile and mining industries also endure poor wages, unsafe, and unfair working conditions. Low wages, long hours, and no consequences for failing to provide appropriate safety equipment for workers translate into lower production costs that allow the owners of the production facilities to make a profit and still offer their goods at affordable prices for those of us in the Global North so we can buy chocolates and flowers to show much we love another person. Yet, it isn’t exactly showing a lot of love for our fellow beings on the planet when we benefit economically at their expense, is it?
The good news is that it is possible to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable manner—without decimating your personal long term financial sustainability. In order to raise awareness about fair trade and help people locate and purchase fair trade items, organizations such as the Canadian Fair Trade Network (CFTN) and Fair Trade Vancouver have launched “Be my Fair Valentine” campaigns over the last few years.
Both the CFTN and Fair Trade Vancouver websites include information about why it’s important to buy fair trade chocolates and flowers, and where you can find other fair trade items, including jewellery made from fairly mined metals and gems and fairly traded handicrafts from around the world. The CFTN also lists sources for eco-friendly clothing, if you’d rather buy clothes as a gift. A note on choosing eco-friendly fashion gifts: According to a seamstress (She owns a company called Conscious Elegance and custom makes eco-conscious wedding dresses) whom I recently interviewed for a book project on socially responsible micro-entrepreneurs (Small Business, Big Change: The Microentrepreneur’s Guide to Social Responsibility), you may want to consider both the sustainability of the plant and the process used to convert the plant into material when assessing the overall eco-friendliness of various fabrics.
In Vancouver, where I live, Fair Trade Vancouver and Oxfam Canada—a long time advocate of fair trade—teamed up for a flash mob in the downtown shopping area, earlier this month, to promote Fair Trade Vancouver’s “Be my Fair Valentine” campaign and Oxfam’s Unwrapped campaign. Rather than giving into the demands of consumerism, and spending money on “stuff”, consider donating money to programs that empower individuals in developing nations to break out of the poverty cycle, either through providing individuals with the resources (e.g. a goat or a beehive) that can generate an income or a micro loan to start a small business. I’ve focused on donation programs that are tied to social justice and economic equality, but you could just as easily make a donation to support the costs of maintaining a sanctuary for animals from neglectful or abusive environments, or to an environmental organization.
Here are a few other ideas for having a sustainable and happy Valentine’s Day:
- By-pass the greeting cards. If you want to send Valentine greetings to your near and dear ones (including family and friends), send e-cards. If you feel really compelled to send a greeting printed on paper, consider making your own cards from 100% recycled paper. The best example of reducing and reusing comes from a news story I read yesterday: One married couple in Britain has apparently been exchanging the same Valentine’s card back and forth for the past 70 years.
- Skip the wrapping paper and choose a reusable gift bag. Better yet, wrap the gift in a cloth bag.
- If you want to give a gift, consider choosing a service (e.g., a meal preparation service or a spa treatment) that the recipient might appreciate more than “yet more stuff”.
- Stay at home and cook a meal from local, organic, or fair trade ingredients.
- Break out of the heart-shaped box for two. Express your appreciation and affection for all the people in your life and throw a party for your friends.
I’ll leave you with the following radical invitation from the Daily Good and encourage you to have fun creating earth friendly and inclusive ways to celebrate the power of love.
[1] Valentine’s Day spending amounts to billions of dollars each year. Retailers anticipate a grand sum of just over $17 billion on Valentine’s Day spending this year.
[2] According to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 survey, roughly $ 4 billion will be spent on jewellery, $3.5 billion spent on dinners at restaurants, $1.8 billion will be spent on flowers (mostly red roses), and $1.5 billion will be spent on candy this year.
February 14, 2012
Posted in: Social Justice, Uncategorized 
2 Comments
Groundhogs, Dragons, and Reigniting the Creative Flame
Groundhogs and Dragons
By the time February rolls around,
We are tired of slogging through rain or slush on the ground.
Eagerly, we wait to be told
Whether we’ll have an early spring or more of winter’s bitter cold.
What an odd rite is this modern day omen
Of a groundhog emerging from his den.
Will the jittery creature see his shadow and run,
Or might he stay outside and bask in a wintery sun?
Meanwhile the dragon coiled at the base of the tree,
Cares not about shadows, senses only a shifting energy
As the angle of the sun’s rays shift and grow longer,
Warming the dragon and making it stronger.
Undaunted by the groundhog’s skittishness and fear,
The dragon makes its first majestic appearance,
To chase away the stale old year,
And get the New Year started with its colorful spring dance.
Sue Chambers
February, 2008
The groundhogs have spoken—albeit not with a unified voice. (You can see the list of contradicting predictions here.) If you live in Ontario or Nova Scotia, you have a 30-40% chance of seeing an early spring. If you live in Alberta, Manitoba, or Pennsylvania, you might be in for another six weeks of winter–depending on whether you believe the groundhogs or the meteorologists at the weather network.
If we really want agreeable weather and just the right amount of rainfall, we should probably be currying favour with dragons since they are the rulers of water and weather, according to Chinese mythology. We have also just ushered in the year of the Dragon with the Chinese New Year’s celebration on January 23rd. In eastern Asia, dragons are generally regarded as benevolent and as symbols of power, strength and luck, so the year of the Dragon is considered exceptionally auspicious. Dragons are also associated with the life force energy that increases as the days gradually lengthen and warm up in the spring.
In the old Celtic cultures, February 2, Imbolc, was observed as the start of spring and new beginnings. A festival honouring Brighid, the Celtic goddess of poetry (and inspiration and creativity more generally), smithcraft, and healing was also held on this day.
If, like me, your creative drive and energy levels took a cue from the groundhog and went into hibernation over the winter months, here are some suggestions for dusting off the winter sluggishness and reigniting your creative flame.
- Do an early spring clean and sort through any clutter that might have accumulated over the winter months. I don’t know about you, but I find that when my surroundings get too cluttered, my energy drags and my creative flow is clogged.
- While taking a shower or a bath, imagine washing away any mental, emotional, or energetic clutter and dust that have accumulated over the winter. A drop of rosemary, citrus or eucalyptus essential oil on the floor of the shower stall smells wonderful and is both cleansing and invigorating.
- Get outside and go for a walk near a river or stream. The negative ions generated by the water will also help to clear the mind and stimulate some new thoughts or ideas. Take a tip from my friend Kate’s book on inner work, and “notice what you notice” while you’re on your walk. It’s amazing what catches our attention when we’re in the moment instead of dwelling in the past or fussing about the future.
- Draw on the meditative and healing power of a candle flame with this meditation.
How do you get your muse or creative energy fired up again after a long winter’s nap? What new projects are you working on this year? What new beginnings are opening up in your life? I invite you to share your ideas and inspirations in the comments section.
Here’s to an auspicious year of the dragon and a refreshed, in
spired muse with a spring in her step.
February 3, 2012
Posted in: Creative process, Spirituality 4 Comments
New Year Wishes for a Peace-filled, Kinder, and Gentler World in 2012
This is a short and sweet post as the muse seems to have gone on holiday without me over the holidays. Oh well, I guess muses deserve a holiday once in a while
.
In the mean time, here’s wishing my readers and friends a year filled with inner peace, joy, access to your inner knowing and meaningful activities that contribute to your purpose in life.
On a global level, I hope that 2012 will see a kinder, gentler, more generous and peace-filled world. I know the people in my family and social circles embody these traits and share them with the rest of the world, and it’s inspiring to be around. Thank you!
What do you wish for yourself and the world in 2012? How will you be part of the change you want to see?
On a parting note, I want to share the following links with you about two inspiring souls in the San Francisco Bay area who epitomize gentleness and generosity (A hat tip to my good friend R for sending me these links):
The first story is about a “rebel” whose cause is loving kindness, published in the e-newsletter Daily Good by an organization called ServiceSpace.
The second story is about a young philanthropist, Nipun Mehta, who started a restaurant, Karma Kitchen, based on a gift economy and that consistently demonstrates people’s generosity and willingness to pay it forward.
All the best for an inspired and enlightened January.
January 2, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments