Stop being so pessimistic!

People who know me superficially will laugh at the title of this post. I admit. I can be a cynic, and an outspoken one at that. Yet, deep down inside, I'm an optimist. Really, I am. I am just more realistic of an optimist than most. :)

In any case, I was reading a capsule in Sunset magazine tonight about designer Shannon Quimby, resident of Portland, OR who undertook what she called the R.E.X. project. That stands for Reuse Everything Experiment. She essentially made it a goal to reuse everything from the tear-down of an old dilapidated house in building a new one on the same site. The idea was simple enough - why throw away perfectly good construction material that still has use (even if it's not in the same capacity as before)?

According to Sunset, she succeeded admirably, not using a single dumpster in the process. While I have always leaned towards restoration over new building - reasoning is also simple enough... there is a lot of stored energy, history, and resources in old buildings and it is incredibly wasteful just to bulldoze and dispose of all of it - but Ms. Quimby's demonstration of how to reuse everything and still get that nice new-house feeling is also quite tantalizing. It's not a bad second choice in my eyes.

However, what made me want to post about REX was the quote at the bottom of the Sunset article:

" In my neighborhood, there's a lot of community brainstorming. One reason the project succeeded was that I never heard "We don't do that." It was always "I don't know how to do that, but here's someone who does." "

Now I can't count the number of times that I've heard the first answer when I proposed environmentally friendly ideas that aren't even that radical to friends and family. And I've always hated that answer. "We don't do that." Or "we can't do that." It's such a cop-out and leaves no room for positive change or growth.

I was taught fairly early on that language reflects our beliefs and sends powerful signals - thus saying something "can't" be done is admitting defeat before even beginning, and nearly always untrue. A much more truthful way of responding would be to say that you "won't" do something - indicating a choice.

Bringing your own chopsticks or silverware to restaurants? Not "can't", but "won't."
Bringing your own bags to the grocery store? Same thing.
Bringing your own tupperware to doggie bag things? Ditto.
Taking public transportation in LA? Yup.
Building high-speed rail in America? You guessed it.

Not saying anyone has to do anything - but hey, if you're making a decision, own up to it at least. That being said, I personally wish the world would all own up to the things they "won't" do in life, and then decide that it WILL do them. :) To tie it back into what Ms. Quimby said... hey, of course you don't do 'that.' If you did, I wouldn't be asking. Now, let's figure out how we CAN do that. Otherwise, we'll never do anything new!

By the way, to read more about Shannon Quimby's project, visit her website!