Live the Dream

The Common Buckeye

Tommy and I have a motto, and it's "Live the Dream." I think that just about sums up how things are going for me right now.

I have something of a Little Prince complex; I have an insatiable urge to find a corner of the earth and become its guardian. If you're unfamiliar with the story, it's about a little blond boy in a green jumpsuit who's the custodian of an asteroid and the single rose that grows on it.

Well, it so happens that I've become the manager of a native plant nursery on campus, with the main objective of propagating plants for use in restoring the native ecology of Strawberry Creek. It's a job that makes me aware of the ecological degradation in my immediate environment, and at the same time empowers me to reverse the damage. That's a great feeling.

We are humans, and we live in a world of our own creation. Through carelessness, greed, or ignorance, we can very easily turn our earth into a dirty, uninhabitable place. However, with engagement, charity, and education, we can make our surroundings beautiful.

In a sense, these are also the two faces of the student co-op where I currently live. It is a place where someone will bake a mixing bowl-full of chocolate chip cookies to share with everyone else. It is also a place where people throw glass bottles off the roof, if only for the joy of hearing glass break.

Why do I celebrate chocolate chip cookies and detest broken glass? I guess it goes back to my desire for order. Perhaps a good example is a wooden sailing ship. This is an example that a Philosophy major-turned-EMT-turned-carpenter once posed to me.

"Consider a wooden sailing ship," he said. "The universe wants nothing more than to see a wooden sailing go to pieces. Without maintenance, the boards will rot, the sails will tear, and the anchor will rust. In essence, a sailing ship is a symbol of man's battle against entropy, that tendency for all systems to head towards chaos. But instead of chaos, we have order, which requires a constant struggle to maintain."

I don't doubt the fact that the earth is a messy system. But that doesn't deter me from striving to create a planet that is more beautiful and livable than the one we have right now.

Update: I was brushing my teeth when I realized that the Netherlands is my dream country. Almost the entire country is below sea level, which is quite inconvenient for a country that borders the ocean. And so originate the dikes and windmill-powered pumps for which Holland is famous. There's a saying that goes, "God made the earth, but the Dutch made the Netherlands."