"It's not easy being…"
Everyone sets goals they don’t keep. Maybe it
was that promise to learn to play the piano. Or to remember to call
that elderly relative more often, or get in touch with that old friend,
or some other thing we really meant to do but never did. Some of us do
it more often than others. Some feel more guilty than others.
Some people assuage their guilt by counting their half-measures. I
thought about calling Great-aunt Tilly quite often. That’s almost the
same, right? After all, everyone knows it’s the thought that counts.
Except, of course, that in that kind of situation, it really doesn’t.
On the other hand, in some situations we should give ourselves credit
for making progress toward a goal. Too many people miss a target and
decide that it’s not worth trying again. It doesn’t help when there are
always nay-sayers around to ridicule them for failing.
For instance, I once knew this guy who had a weight problem who had
decided to try to do something about it. He made some changes to his
diet and started walking more. They weren’t long walks, just walking to
the corner store instead of driving, that sort of thing. He had been
doing this for about a month when another friend started interrogating
him about what he was doing. Soon he was ranting about how the amount
of walking the guy was doing wasn’t enough exercise to get him in
shape. He told him if that’s all he could do, he might as well just
give up, because obviously he wasn’t serious.
So it was no surprise that my friend gave up. Not to say that having
so-called friend belittle one’s effort is an excuse to stop trying. The
decision about whether to keep walking was his to make. Maybe he would
have given up on his own without the rant. No one can say. Clearly, if
he had been doing the same inadequate amount of exercise six months
later, then it might have been justified to take him to task. And
before that time a friend is always within their rights to politely
suggest one try a little harder.
I was reminded of this recently while listening to someone I barely
know lecturing some people she barely knew about “being green.” They
weren’t doing enough, she said. They had no right to feel good about
trying to be responsible by recycling, using re-usable grocery bags,
and changing their light bulbs to compact florescent. She had a bunch
of other things she thought they should be doing, which she proceeded
to lecture them about.
If I had been feeling mean, I could have pointed out that her car—a
20-year-old four-door thing almost the size of a hummer—wasn’t exactly
friendly to the environment. Maybe I should have, just as two wrongs
don’t make a right, seeing someone be unreasonable to another person
doesn’t give me the right to be rude.
Like so many things in life, trying to be responsible about the
environment is complicated. If the only way to build a hybrid car is to
dig dangerous ore containing heavy metals from the ground, then process
them in plants to release toxins into the environment, might it be
better to stick with an older, fuel-efficient car? Is it better to eat
canned vegetables that were grown and processed within 50 miles of your
home or to eat fresh vegetables that we shipped from the other side of
the planet? Which process used up more resources and produced more
pollutants? Where do you look up those things? And if you spend several
hours every week fretted about and researching such questions, what
impact does that have on the environment or your health?
Some half-measures are no better than not trying at all. At the other
end of the spectrum, the law of diminishing returns means that trying
to hard is worse than not trying at all. Finding the middle ground—a
balance between productive and counter-productive—is the real challenge.
--Laurence J. Peter
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