That Pause or Double Take.....

I am here to talk to you about the climactic pause or double take and what it means to me. Now I know what some of y’all may be thinking about: that double take to see if the guy or girl across the bar is actually attractive denoting whether or not your first glance assumption was valid. While that double take or paused moment is definitely a note-worthy subject, that is not what I am thinking about. I am referring to that pause or double take that makes you reconsider your previous thoughts or your forthcoming decision. I am talking about that pause that makes you change your mind, and change your mind for the better.

As a science person and as someone who loves the outdoors and wants to preserve its majesty, even before I embarked on our Greener Days Project, I was aware of global warming, and not just that elevated levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, was accumulating in the atmosphere trapping in heat and slowly warming the earth. I was aware of the specifics: that glaciers were melting, the amazon is drying, and the seas are acidifying and things are only getting worse each day. However even with this knowledge, I still didn’t act on how I was contributing to these issues and more importantly how I could use my knowledge to make greener choices.

Project Greener Days gave me the incentive and quite literally the kick in the butt I needed to start making those greener choices. But even more than initiative, my involvement on this team has given me something more powerful, and that is, the pause. This is the pause that after washing your hands and reaching for the paper towels because they are quick, you think “what am I doing?” and instead put your hands under the automatic hand dryer, thus saving a tree and quite a bit of waste.  This is the pause that forces you to take the extra time to separate your Elon Phoenix cup and straw from its lid and place it in the compostable bin instead of quickly trashing all of it. This is the double take that after looking in the trash bin and seeing plastic and glass bottles, forces you to stick your hand in the trash and relocate them to the recycling bin. So many times throughout this past week and each day I have found myself finally using my knowledge of global warming and that all powerful pause to make greener choices. It took me a very long time to realize that it is only the matter of a few extra seconds, seconds, to be more environmentally friendly.

To all those people out there doubting me in my conclusions, I have something to say to you, and it comes from a trio of men known as the Three Musketeers, and that is “All for one, and one for all”. If the planet I’m trying to protect goes down, so does your planet. So that is why we need to lead by example! Because we are all in this together. So please, act on that pause or use your double take to do something meaningful, and by meaningful I do not mean to get enough courage to ask that hot guy or girl out at the bar. Take a few seconds to make your choices greener and healthier and I hope to see y’all in Greener Days.