Are You a Marshmallow Eater or a Dot Connector?

Remember when you were in Kindergarten and the teacher would hand out a paper with dots on it and tell the class to trace the dots and see what you would find.  We all did this and suddenly an elephant or a tiger or a tree would appear.  

Well, we are no longer kids in Kindergarten and the dots we need to connect have not been set out on a plain piece of paper by someone else, but this skill is still extremely important.  But now we have to do this on our own.  There is even a poem and a book,  All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum which is exactly what I am talking about here - he took the basics we learned back then and applied them to adult life.

But what happens now that we are adults is that we may do a fine job of connecting most of the dots, such as how to make a living, how to create and a maintain our relationships, raise our children, be a good citizen, and have a little fun as we go along, because even Kindergartener's had recess and were allowed to go outside and play.  In fact, many of us get caught up in all these responsibilities and activities and we forget to pay attention to the random dots that appear.   

Noticing the Random Dots

Recently I was at a TGIF get together with some work related folks and one of the women started talking about an article she had read about climate change and how this was a threat to the world's food supplies.  She talked about how all the floods and fires and green house gases were a major threat to the food we need to survive. She implied that she was an environmentalist and remarked on some ot the things she was doing to help eliminate this problem.   She talked about what the article suggested we could do and what she herself was doing - eat less meat, eat more seeds and nuts and pay attention to the rise in food prices as this is an indicator of the actual result of climate change.

But then the conversation meandered off onto what we might do for fun over the weekend and this same woman said she and her husband were going glamping.  I had never heard of this and so I asked her what this was.  Well, it turns out that glamping is glamour camping or as one website called it Glamping is where stunning nature meets modern luxury. It’s a way to experience the untamed and completely unique parts of the world—without having to sacrifice creature comforts.
She then said that her and her husband owned a six bed luxury motor home they used for this.  Now if you make the choice to live full time in one of these things then maybe your carbon footprint is no more or even less than a standard house - but in the case of this woman and her husband they of course do not live in this vehicle but only use if for glamping.  Well, using what I learned in Kindergarten I know for certain that someone who does not live full time in one of these luxury vehicles but only uses it for glamping, is messing up the environment regardless of what she tells herself and others at a TGIF happy hour.  I know that her carbon footprint is way over the limit for someone who professes to live an environmentally conscious life. 

Comfort Zones and Connecting the Dots 

Now I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I hope that what this woman did when she got home that day was to think about this article and connect the dots of her life and begin to make some changes, but I seriously doubt that she will do this.  Most people are more interested in their own comfort and pleasure than they are in some far off consequence to the world at large.  But as the name of my blog implies the smart people are the ones who learn, grow and evolve and when we stop to think and consider something like climate change and what we ourselves might be doing that actually contributes to it, well, we have some choices to make and some of them may not be comfortable, but an evolving person will do this even when it's not all that pleasant to do.    

The Marshmallow Experiment 

Another dot we need to connect is the idea of looking at the big picture.  Back in the 60's a Stanford Professor did an experiment with young children where he put a marshmallow on a table and told them he had to leave the room for a few minutes but if they waited to eat the marshmallow until he returned they would get both the marshmallow and a prize.  What he found in later testing was that those children who waited until he returned and did not eat the marshmallow did better in life than those who ate the marshmallow as soon as he left the room.  So my question today is, can you delay some gratification by connecting the random dots that show up in your life and think about what you can do now for a better world down the road - whether this is the global world or your own personal world - ask yourself are you a dot connector or just a marshmallow eater?  

Blessings, Lorraine 

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