Eco audit: new perspectives

Right at the end of my teens, I got a bucket load of new perspective. I lived abroad for half a year. I may not have backpacked around South America, or lived in a mud hut, but I went far enough to get some fresh perspective.

Going to a country on the other side of Germany may not seem that far. Not that different. Which was, I suspect, why there was more of a surprise factor. There were a lot of differences, sure, and some of those were also down to the particular location I was living in (a boarding school connected to a convent).

But one of the factors that really struck me was space. How much of it – or not. We were situated not that far from Warsaw, and many of the people working at the school would not have afforded to rent a place in Warsaw or nearby.  So they lived on site.

One of my friends lived in the female educators house (I think they called it). It was not unlike many halls of residence for universities – I mean those when I was studying, rather than those that have been built in the last few years.

(New halls of residence are built more for the people who will rent them, and make money for the university, while the students are not there in the holidays. In my humble opinion, as they say online.)

My friend was proud of her room because there was enough space on the floor beside her bed to fit another mattress.  That meant she could invite someone to visit her. And that was luxury indeed.

Most homes in Poland are small, unless you live out of a city, and (importantly) have enough money to build your own place. When I did my recce trip to a different part of Poland, after my studies, to see if I would teach there, I stayed with someone who still shared her bedroom with her sister.

They were in their 20s, and they still shared their room.  And their parents slept on the sofa bed in the sitting room.  It is taken for granted that parents will sleep in the sitting room. In fact, it’s pretty much taken for granted that your bed is also a sofa bed, even in a child’s room, and that you make it again every night.

Towards the end of my first stay in Poland, I remember going to cash some travellers’ cheques. I needed money to pay for the big train journey home.  The place I went to was above a hotel, in downtown Warsaw. All very nicely appointed.

The bit that was tricky was going up the escalators, from floor to floor, and seeing how much space was wasted. I would look at the corridor as I went up through the building, and mentally calculate how many people could be housed in that space.

My perspective on living space had changed.  Which was just as well, in some ways, as I was about to make the shift to student life – where your living space is very much affected by your ability to pay.

Why spin this story? I guess because sometimes we have to undergo some kind of a change in order to evaluate what we already have.  It has become popular to make fun of people having ‘gap yahs‘ but they can still be profound in their impact. And it doesn’t have to be a gap year either – I am finding just as much challenge in the building project just now.

Much of the time, we need incentives to change.  We need examples to see it’s not that hard – in fact, life goes on just fine in the new arrangement. The longer we become used to the new way of life, the easier it becomes to keep going.

The youngest member of the family seems to be coping just fine with arrangements at the moment.  The floor space is smaller, there are fewer toys available – but it doesn’t seem to matter.  Playing is still taking place just as much as normal.  (Which kind of bears out some of the simpler living stuff that I’m thinking about.)

As a teenager, eagerly anticipating change, life that we can shape for ourselves, it’s not so hard.  Change becomes harder as you get older.  I now know the comforts of having the same of certain things: the same mug for coffee, the same products from a food shop, perhaps.

So. Yes. We can live with less space. We can live with less stuff. We can simplify, and we are not less ourselves. It helps me that I’ve experienced new perspectives, earlier in life – it helps me know the benefit of it.

But right now, my teenage self may well be looking ahead and encouraging me to continue seeking them.  Which is really the point of this month’s set of posts.  It’s OK to go in a certain direction – eco behaviour – but we can still find sticking points. Blind spots.

Time to shake things up again, I think.