by Steve Peisch
 

Many of us who grew up in the '60s studied the Native Americans in elementary school, and many of us were impressed by the stories of the Plains Indians and their relationship with the buffalo.

The stories of Native American hunters offering a prayer of gratitude to the spirit of the freshly killed buffalo and their ingenious and thorough use of all parts of this animal stuck with me. According to the accounts, the buffalo's meat was preserved skillfully for future consumption; its hide stretched to form the sides of teepees; its bones turned into weapons and flutes. The list of uses apparently continued until nothing remained, and both hunter and hunted disappeared from the prairie.

This paradigm of human beings living respectfully and intelligently within the specific limits of their environment was affixed in my thinking, and it was the comparison to this paradigm that first made me aware of the wastefulness of our own culture.

There are now many trends in contemporary life that point in the direction of the Plains Indian ideal—recycling centers, compost bins, community gardens, used clothing stores—and they seem to reflect our increasing awareness of how much we have (too much), how much we actually need (less), how much we can reuse (more), yet how much we still mindlessly throw away.

In order to realize how much we have, we may need to go somewhere far away. We have grown accustomed to the poor at our own door and may need a more dramatic experience to realize that even our youngest children have much more than most families in Third World countries. What we should do after we realize this striking imbalance is simple: try to live with less—maybe much less; try to give away more; and try to make sure what we give away actually helps people.

How much we need is a complex question that is connected to the concept of "satisfaction." Certainly, the times when we are the most satisfied don't seem to converge with the times when we are consuming the most. On the other hand, the pristine mountain slope witnessed on a ski trip only seems simple and spiritual and satisfying—in truth it is vastly expensive and accessible to only a small percentage of the population. Nor do I think it possible for a hungry or sick or endangered child to experience satisfaction: certain basic physical and psychological pre-conditions must be met first.

The question of how much we should reuse should keep all of us continuously problem-solving, even if this results in ridiculous experiments that only help us laugh at ourselves. Five-year-olds reuse simple objects again and again through imaginative play. We should try to revert to this type of thinking before we decide to throw anything away.

Conversations about avoiding waste seem alive among my relatives, friends, and students, but it is the mindlessness aspect that still digs at me. Just as the Plains Indian hunters seemed to have considered their acts in the context of broader concepts, so should we become increasingly aware of what we do to avoid waste and how effectively we donate some of our surplus to the mission of helping people who are less fortunate. And we should deepen our conversations about mindfulness in hopes that we can move beyond the concept of wasting only material things, for our time and motivation and intelligence and good will can be wasted just as mindlessly as our food and water, our paper and oil.