[GennyM]

For the past few years, one of my major obsessions has had to do with the environment, and garbage, specifically plastic. I recycle everything I can, but it just seems hopeless. I start thinking about landfills, and that plastic bottles take thousands of years to degrade. I see those pictures from heavily polluted areas in China, and around the world, and just start to wonder about the human species. This obsession really bothers me and can ruin me having a good time, for example seeing trash on the beach disgusts me and makes me want to leave. I've had other obsessions over the years, and many times there is an uncertainty to whether or not they are true, but how can I argue with myself about our planet being in dire straights? I'm also not sure if it's a kind of responsibility type OCD, like somehow it's my job to fix the environment, but I know there's no way. How do you argue with obsessions like these, that are logical? I always cared about the environment, but I can't stand thinking about every plastic bottle in the ocean.

[Skeezyks]

Hello GennyM: Yes... if one really stops & thinks about it... this world is a scary place. My wife & I recycle everything we can too. But when I look around at all of the waste that is created by stores, manufacturers, restaurants, & all of us as individuals, etc. it just boggles my mind! I can't imagine the world can go on like this for centuries to come.

I don't know as there is any way to argue against these kinds of obsessions. The world is what it is. I think all most of us can do is to simply do what we can to address this sort of thing to the extent it occurs around us. For example, my wife & I have a dog we walk every day. We always pick up any litter we come upon along the way. We then dispose of it in a trash. Of course, in the end, the trash can gets emptied & the contents go to a trash collection center or perhaps to a landfill. So picking up the litter we pass on the street isn't a solution to the problem of global pollution. But it's something we can do.

Beyond that, I think we simply have to learn, as the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön has written, to be "comfortable with uncertainly."