Replace Sustainability With Healthy

These days, using the word “sustainability” sometimes gives me an uncomfortable sense of jumping on a bandwagon.

The streets are full of office workers wearing SDG pin badges, and businesspeople gather in big halls, sipping champagne while competing to boast about how great their company’s environmental initiatives are.

It’s deeply uncomfortable.

Sometimes in conversation I catch myself saying something like “well… if I have to put it in those terms, I guess it’s sustainability,” as if it’s a word I don’t really want to use but reach for anyway because it happens to be the right one.

The smart solution to this discomfort is probably to avoid overusing the word and save it for occasional use.

In other words, find a substitute word.

I think that substitute is “healthy,” and also “facing discomfort head-on.”

An unhealthy life doesn’t last long (in some cases it ends early, ending life itself).

A life where discomfort goes unaddressed doesn’t last long either — you break down mentally,

and end up living a life that has nothing to do with satisfaction.

This describes a state without sustainability.

In other words, Not A = Not B = Not C, so it seems logically valid, more or less, to treat these as interchangeable.

Yoga is in demand because of its healthy aspect and its introspective aspect, the one spoken of in the context of meditation.

The movements and the breathing itself have a positive effect on health,

and as the basics of yoga show — “concentrate only on your own breath” — it also teaches you to pay attention to yourself, aim for stability, and properly confront whatever obstructs that stability.

The sustainability now spoken of globally calls for paying attention to the planet, seriously considering its stability, picking out the factors obstructing that stability, and properly confronting a great many things we take for granted.

This sometimes also means “stopping and standing still,”

which matches what many “people who just keep charging down an unhealthy path” forget to do, or find hard to do even when they mean to.

For thoughts on “stopping and standing still” in Europe, see here. Impressions from a business trip to Europe (Milan – Berlin)

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/09/1469/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.