Outrageous Thoughts on a Sleepless Night

Who was thinking when we awake from a midnight sleep?

Where is the mind on a sleepless night, fully aware and observing? The other night I was shocked to realize I awoke thinking about packaging around the world and how really wasteful it is. I thought about Sam’s club, a  glass jar wrapped up 4 times by the time I got it home. Then I remembered a car radio which I ordered on line, it arrived with excessive Styrofoam and plastic bags for every part. Our lifestyle lacks any awareness of the excessive packaging for everything. Sad to imagine how much environmental waste is created as a result of packaging and re packaging. Paper, cardboard, plastic, Styrofoam peanuts, wooden crates for certain stuff, complete with brackets we don’t use and instruction books we don’t read. These are Outrageous Thoughts on a Sleepless Night so I go to the bathroom for the morning pee.

It is all connected folks; from the little innocent coffee bean hanging on a limb someplace, to the invisible effect it has on our organism and environment.

As I sit there in my pajamas, (which were also packaged and transported) I look around my bathroom and begin thinking about the transportation it took to get it all here. I sat there thinking about the containers arriving in harbors around the world carrying, mirrors,lights,  toilet seats, sinks, shower heads, toothpaste, towels, shampoo, etc. Each and every item is packaged and shipped and waiting to be unwrapped displayed and sold. I think about my morning Coffee and am dismayed at my Outrageous Thoughts on a Sleepless Night.

Transporting it All

Few of us will forgo or delete the luxury of coffee from Columbia or Hawaii in our daily life.  We go to the store; we bring it home packaged again and think nothing of it. That coffee bean was grown in another country and packaged in yet another. The history of one Coffee bean is unimportant yet, imagining the transport of them multiplied by all the other things we consume in a day is staggering.

 As I make the coffee, my conscious mind is now moving to a place verging on depression. Not only Outrageous Thoughts on a Sleepless Night but during the day as well. The coffee industry gets us to drink it, and only in the past few years gives us the throw away the cup. Advertising represents some enormous percentage of the cost of a coffee. Marketing a paper cup of coffee is intimately yolked getting it to us.  They fly people across continents, ravage whole communities with coffee production and stress our environment even more. Coffee is ready; I take that first aromatic sip of delight and satisfaction. Perhaps I could carry my own  coffee cup when I go out, 8 oz or 12oz?

I imagine millions of us a glancing towards that fabulous liquid at this very instant?  All those beans converted into a brown water experience and later the byproduct is waste, in the form of the cup, the grounds and the classic need to pee. Who came up with this tradition!

Not finished thinking, One more reflection.

Now we have had all the special coffee we want and the consequences of an extra strong, extra large espresso  becomes a health issue. To regain the comfort lost from too much coffee is a pharmaceutical delight. Pills, (more packaging transport and advertising) to heal our kidneys. Now we need a health spa, yoga mats or meditation group, (more packaging transport and advertising) to calm the effects of the hypertension. What we felt all those years was great but now it is time to pay but not for coffee. It is all connected folks; from the little innocent coffee bean hanging on a limb someplace, to the invisible effect it has on our organism and environment.