Energy

Quite often people ask me why I run everywhere. Actually, my favorite one is... Where do you get all that energy? What I want to say to them is... Where do YOU get all that energy? 

See, I'm running down the street, usually pushing a stroller with a couple of kids. Kind of heavy, but well designed, so it's really not that hard to do, and i'm lucky if my top speed gets close to 7 or 8 kilometers per hour. My energy came from breakfast, or the coffee I just had.

THEY are moving a tonne of metal down the road (not to mention all of the people and stuff encased in that huge contraption) at enormous speeds exceeding 50k/h. Their energy did not come from breakfast (except maybe the energy they are using to push the gas pedal down), but it is not magic either. 

The amount of energy it really takes to push that car or truck down the street is really quite staggering when you come to think about it. But most of us don't. Not even me most of the time. In our world we are generations removed from actually thinking about the energy we use in any real way. I would venture to guess that very few of us even know what it is like to do all of our laundry by hand, or chop down our own fire wood to heat our homes, or even bring our own food from its source in the land to our plates.

Because of how our world is set up it is almost impossible for most of us to have any direct connection to to the energy we use in everyday life. Also, because of how our world works, our lives are so busy and complicated that we couldn't slow down enough to think about it even if we tried. I am starting to think that this disconnect that we have from the energy we use causes us to use what we do have extravagantly and at times needlessly, without even being aware of it. 

Everything is just magic. Press the gas pedal and the car goes. Turn the thermostat and the house is warm. Go to the store and pick up dinner. Sure we pay with money (which is supposed to represent the energy we put into our work), but I think the metaphor is lost on us.

I'm not saying any of this to make anyone feel bad. I don't even think that people need to abandon their cars and start running around instead. I just think maybe we should just think about where our energy comes from, and what it all means. Because if you change how you think, then your actions will follow in ways that are meaningful to you. 

As for me, I am starting to wonder how many kilometers I would have to run to equal the energy that it takes to power my iPhone.