May Full Moon Greetings

This month, I'd like to tell you a story about resistance.

Once upon a time, I had the good fortune of being met with a challenge in my local community. The challenge was to communicate the implications of our biospheric interconnectedness at a grass roots level — literally, right in my own driveway.

At the time, I lived in a cookie-cutter suburban town-home community in San Jose. My neighbor liked to wash his car in front of his garage, which was on a paved driveway shared by all the condos in our development. A recent visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium had re-awakened my awareness of how runoff pollution from residential car washing impacts our world's water bodies. When I observed my neighbor washing his car and saw the soapy runoff coursing into the nearest storm drain, I couldn't remain silent.

With compassion in my heart and a sense that he must not be aware of the impact of his behavior or he would not persist in it, I walked up to him and informed him that car wash water running into storm drains is not treated the same as waste water from our homes. Storm drain run-off goes straight into the nearest waterway, which would eventually make its way into the ocean. I did not ask him to stop washing his car in the driveway. I said simply that I wanted him to be aware of its impact.

Rather than thank me for sharing the news, he became flustered, defending himself. Later, he came to my home, knocked on my door, and demanded proof of my environmental allegations from "a legitimate government agency" not from - and here he just waved his arms vaguely about him. This gesture I took to mean "general, assumed knowledge."

Ironically, when I later spoke with a water expert at the EPA, this legitimate government agency representative told me he could not provide a single, simple, succinct resource that depicts the impact of runoff from car washing on the environment. He said, "It's just generally known." When I pressed the issue, saying that general knowledge was insufficient to sway my neighbor, he excerpted three opaque paragraphs from a complex legal code, and then summarized it for me: "Car wash runoff is an illicit discharge."

My efforts to find the right bit of information to communicate with my neighbor put me in touch with environmental agencies at both the national and local levels. When I attempted to deliver my package of findings to my neighbor - which, incidentally, he refused to take, with a hand up and an "I trust you" - I thanked him for the opportunity to enlighten myself. I would not have made the effort if I had not been met by his initial resistance. Resistance had proven itself an ally to my evolution.

And, no, my neighbor never did stop washing his car in the driveway. He would just drive to another spot out of my view. The moral of my story is not "education is the answer to our environmental crises." Education is one part of the equation, but how many of us know what's healthy and still choose other behavior?

No. The lesson learned was this: Resistance gives us something to grapple with, and in the grappling we grow.

In physical fitness, resistance is the heart of strength training; it builds muscle. And in certain religious traditions, grappling with God is integral to spiritual development.

If there's a resistance you've been avoiding, consider engaging it instead. Perhaps your soul is calling you to grow.