Learning to Live with Inconvenience: A letter to self

My wish for myself in a post-Corona world: Learning to live with inconvenience.

Inconvenience, in my letter to self, is defined as follows: not having, or having restricted access to goods and services, ala Coronaesque like. The inconvenience of not having the "King" in the customer anymore. Convenience would then be defined as having access to goods and services at our every convenience. This is what I have been thinking about - will the world be better off with more inconvenience? I think so. I want to be more conscious and awake and let the inconvenience of a post Corona world to force me to be present and mindful.

I don’t want to be able to fly to Rome as if it’s a bus and almost as cheap. I want it to be inconvenient enough to help me understand how extraordinary it is to fly and see new places. How privileged we all are in the west. Through this inconvenience I want to be mindful of the impact my movements have on the world, its biodiversity and the foot print I leave behind. I want to be reminded that I co-exist on this planet with many beautiful living organisms that have just as much right to light, height and freedom as I do.

I want to remember how consumers, like me, wanting greater access to cheaper animal protein has driven the growth and exploitation of animals for cheap meat. I welcome the inconvenience of eating meat once a month, or less, and being cognisant of the life that has been given up to feed me and also having to pay a high enough price to mitigate its loss. What price would be put on the heads of our loved ones to be eaten?

Population growth is inconvenient in keeping the world fed.

I want to start thinking about the inconvenience of limiting the use of fossil fuels and what that would mean for me. I know that it would make my convenient world a lot more uncomfortable. I wish that Politicians in power would have the courage to talk into this tension to secure a better, and most likely more uncomfortable, future rather than just the next vote.

I feel the inconvenience I am talking about as a real pain in the arse. I want to be free to travel, eat and buy as my money allows. My mind is calling me out on this idiocy I have put before myself. That’s how the system works I am saying, use it. Everyone else is! I have been led to believe it's about me and my needs now, and not waiting to fulfil them. So, I love buying avocados out of season and having that bottle of Gin delivered the same day to meet my need for a G&T without planning.  It’s ok, I say, to have fun and enjoy life. A life of frugality and self-restraint is not much fun and life should be fun and we should be happy. Everyone has a right to be happy, including me.

Why should I exercise self-restraint when plane tickets, avocados and meat are cheap and convenient? Why should I put myself out like this when the convenience of modern life still exists? Will I be more willing to accept inconvenience when the world is forced out of convenience or when governments eventually say that only they can have access to it?

I am only a drop in the ocean of the billions of bodies that sponge the earth, what difference will my inconvenience make to the convenience curve? My mind revolts against this concept of inconvenience, and then it turns to the suffering and injustice that exists alongside (or in some cases as a direct response to my desire for convenience) and is troubled. Those jeans from China or customer service department in India. My money bought them by proxy, but at what cost? Modern convenience is expensively cheap.

I consider, on an early Sunday morning walk through the streets of Amsterdam, the inconvenience of revellers having to keep their trash on them instead of throwing it on the ground or in the canals. I wonder if that will change the way they might think about how, and how much, they consume? The inconvenience of the municipality cleaning up the streets creates the convenience of our lives.

I value orderliness and cleanliness, like most, and dispose of the trash I make as quickly as I can so as not to inconvenience my living space with its smells and sights. Why should I have to be confronted with my waste more than is necessary? When the municipal bins are full, I might just leave my trash next to it thinking that better because: first of all it's not my fault they haven’t emptied the bins on time and secondly, what an inconvenience it will be to take it back home and store it there until the bins are empty again.

Has convenience become a bad habit? Or has it sanitised our minds of the fact that our lives impact the world and in some cases is leading to its destruction? We rarely get to see how!

I am learning to live with inconvenience because I feel that it is important to do so. Inconvenience is coming to the world, sooner rather than later. Would the letter from the future say, “Just exercise self-restraint and inconvenience now and see the world heal to a degree that is still liveable?”. The ultimate inconvenience I can see is the extinction of the human race or annihilation of the Planet in the name of our comfort and convenience.

Complex problems do not have simple solutions. There is no one-fixes-all solution to the problems we face. I feel they need to be tackled as a united front and from many angles. Maybe learning to live with inconvenience can help policy makers make the tough choices they need to, and help soften the blows when they come - giving us the space to create beautiful angles.