“One email a day…keeps the doctor away”..?
I don’t know if that is true. But I think it was that saying, about the apple, that popped up in my head one morning. Having moved away from my usual circle of friends, family, well, even culture, I’ve found myself getting upset, over and over again. ” Why do these people do like this, how can they use stuff like that, why don’t they think about X W Y…..”. As we all know, being upset and keeping it in our minds and bodies without outlet…just isn’t such a great thing (to top I off, I would also double-upset myself – being sort of a peace maker, the feeling of “hidden upset” towards people, or, rather towards their actions or non-actions, would upset me yet more, as I don’t like to hold grudges with people – and here I was doing just that, but with no tools for even expressing it and giving them a chance to respond…which made me feel lousy…and the circle went on). But, I just didn’t know what to do about it, everything seemed so big, too big, a whole culture of….things that I wish were done differently. Arrgh.
And so one morning, this all happened again. In this case, a specific thing (or a few, actually) in a magazine I was reading. And here there was a specific “topic owner”, a person. So I started writing an email, to ask the questions I had, about their branding as eco-friendly clothing, where the eco-friendliness was nowhere to be found (in my mind) when checking their homepage out.
I made a point to formulate my thoughts in questions, rather than questioning. I know that things that seems true to me aren’t necessary true at all, or not true for other people. And banging my truth in the head of someone else doesn’t seem to be the best way to actually get a response or awake new thoughts in the other.
Writing my letter, I realized that this might be a…life-saver for me! Touching on topics I find important, through communicating with other people, in a conscious and clear way, through asking questions and being open to learning, while pointing out things that concern me – in the format of emails, messages, notes…and sharing them here, for other people to get inspired to do the same, take part in the learning process we’re all in.
Either we are talking about environmental concerns, sexism, racism…and all their cousins – we definitely need big systematical changes. And awareness on the personal and individual level is a parallel process I believe, and intertwined with the former. So, let’s do the work, together, from all angles ❤
Thank you for reading this far if you have. Now, let’s go and ask some questions…
Link to the One email a day-category here on the blog:
www.pancakesonthethird.com/category/one-email-a-day
Jenny
* My mission here is not to disrupt small businesses or pin down individuals in any way – the topics themselves are what’s important to me, so I will probably take out the recipients’ names in the posts where I feel it to be accurate, depending a bit on the situation. Hopefully anyone who comes across and read here will ask similar questions themselves whenever needed – maybe we will even send our questions to the same places eventually, which would only be good 🙂
** A note for the detail-oriented people (like myself) – the “one a day”-part in the heading is to be read a bit…metaphorically. I don’t know how often these emails and messages will be formulated and sent. 🙂
Pancakesonthethird 