Considering the alternatives, it’s hard to think how “sustainability” could be an idea needing a time to come. Common sense isn’t always common, though.

The pitfall is that the short-term interest can run counter to the long-term interest. I just ate a candy bar, mindful that it’s bad for my weight, but, well. I can do things to mitigate that, so the abstract future is dealt with in the abstract, and the concrete moment is met with direct action and instant gratification.

To burn oil and coal now is the obvious choice, and we hope the future will be dealt with in ways we don’t have awareness of as yet. We trust that, future times, smarter people will invent better methods that will minimize the consequences of our current lifestyles.

Sustainability requires that we behave in ways such that all concerned participants can endorse the arrangement. 

In a house live Mom and Dad and two children. Everyone plays a part in ensuring peaceful coexistence, in creating a culture accommodating of each so all can endorse the arrangement as one in which each plays a constructive part.

The husband has to be the husband and the father. He has to accept his role as one who sets an example of selflessness, benevolence, and restraint, mindful of the teaching that one should be the servant of all. That simply means using all his resources and abilities for the good of everyone. He has to work with his wife so they are a unified, inseparable team that the children can unconditionally rely on for love, acceptance, support, and guidance. Husbands and wives have traditional roles in providing income and doing housework, but the days are long gone when a responsible husband could expect to come home and do nothing materially constructive.

The wife has to be the wife and the mother. Wives and mothers need no advice from me. But she should be quick to step in and assist the husband who wants to help, but doesn’t do so good at it. A kind word and an unspoken understanding of a father’s frustrations at not being able to do everything and solve every problem are most appreciated. And we all know that’s a two-way street!

Kids need to be respected and appreciated. It’s not their place to do the things we wanted to and weren’t able to. Kids deal with a far more complex world than we did at their age. As adults deal with things their kids couldn’t imagine, so do kids.

Parents need to have faith in their kids, and be patient. They have to live their own lives. A kid has to be himself or herself, and figure that out on the fly, under duress. He or she needs to know he has a safe place at home where he or she will be, if not always understood, at least loved and appreciated.

Parents need to set good examples and trust that, someday, the kids will remember, understand, and emulate behavior worthy of that.

When the short term plan prepares the best possible scenario for the long term, that’s sustainable behavior.

People can run out of patience, just as a field can run out of nutrients because of short-sighted agricultural practices.

People can get overheated when someone keeps polluting the atmosphere with abuse and deception.

But the waves of the oceans roll as they always have, winds blow as they always have, the Sun shines on, upon good and bad alike, as it always has– sustainably, until the end of the age– clean power we’ve always had in abundance all around us.

Gardening our inherited property is an ongoing process of discovery and revelation.

My Bible has Genesis’ second sentence saying that the Earth was a formless void. Faced with a formless void, what is one to do? The possibilities would be endless. I would be reluctant to tangle with a formless void. Left alone, it would be fine, but once I tried to improve upon it, I’d soon be in way over my head.

But after looking at a formless void long enough, one might gain a vision.

If you have a bonsai tree, you know that you don’t rush into a project like that. What exactly is one to do with a bonsai tree? How are you going to trim it, and train it? Once you prune away a branch, the branch is gone, and all the options one would have had with it are gone. First, one contemplates the entirety of the tree, and all its parts. One figures out the role each piece plays in the entirety, then, knowing exactly what one is doing, acts with certainty.

The yard we have was not a formless void when we moved in, but it might as well have been. The only unchangeable thing about it is the property line, but within that, our freedom and creativity have enormous leeway. We could cut down all the trees, bulldoze the raised beds, and dig up the lawn.

Instead, we decide we like the trees, and the raised beds, and all the abundance of stuff growing without our assistance.

Flowers grow, but in such abundance, they take over large sections of the yard. The flowers die, and nothing is left but a sticky type of plant spreading billions of seeds. That stuff is pulled up, and another plant just like it takes over, so, in turn, it is pulled up. Big plants with lots of flowers brighten the garden, but the flowers die, and nothing is left but an unattractive plant that apparently does nothing but take up space.

I’m reluctant to remove this stuff, because there’s so much of it, and at least it’s something in the garden, and what would remain if I removed it? Maybe a desolate patch of brown would be all that’s left. But pulling up all that stuff, one finds other plants that have been lurking and struggling underneath. The Summer garden has been waiting for the Spring garden to get out of its way.

Winter has its flowers that must make way for the flowers of Spring, and those must be removed for the flowers of Summer. Then the tomatoes and other vegetables of Summer can linger as long as they want into Autumn. When those are done, one is left with the empty spaces that had been so quickly and completely filled by the flowers of Winter.

Maybe instead of waiting for that, one can fill those spaces with blueberries, raspberries, huckleberries, and salmonberries, maybe some nice little trees, and not have so much work to do in coming years merely to accommodate plants one sees everywhere when one instead can fulfill a vision of a garden full of the types of special plants one has realized would be a perfect fit for the yard.

One can have not just a formless void, but one’s very own colorful, fragrant, nutritious, photogenic, doted-upon formless void!

You can learn a lot about someone from the World Cup.

Which do you prefer: vengeance, or justice?

Notwithstanding the complexities of the particular teams that might be involved in any given situation, if a team beats your team, do you want that team to lose its next game, or keep winning? If they lose their next game, one can say, “Now they’re losers too,” whereas if they win the competition, at least we lost to the best team.

I realized recently that it’s hard to dislike a baseball team.

It’s hard to dislike a particular city, too. If I say I hate some city, I’m exposing myself as someone lacking the insight to appreciate the charms and characters of a given city. I don’t have to want to live there, or even visit, but humans live there, and humans always have their positive sides so that one can benefit from their acquaintance.

All the more impossible, then, to dislike an entire country. Certainly one can appreciate the histories of nations, and how much mud can be thrown because of that?

When Mexico plays the US, when Ireland plays England, when England plays Germany, when Argentina plays Brazil, it’s easy to appreciate how hotly contested are such matches, and how keenly the fans feel about a win or a loss against their ancient enemies.

These feelings aren’t hard to understand. As the Seattle Sounders fell behind to our great rival, the Portland Timbers, in a match earlier this season, as I sulked over my beer, if it was up to me, I said, the coach should be fired if our team was going to be humiliated like that.

But as someone fond of all things Portland, it’s just silly and weird to think that I’d think that the only thing I don’t like about Portland is their soccer team. Their fans, perhaps? Well, if there’s really a difference between Seattle and Portland fans, or Husky and Ducks fans, or Red Sox and Yankees fans, or German and English fans, I haven’t seen it.

Then there are Brazilian fans– different! No complaints from me about that! On the contrary.

I’m lucky to live in Seattle during the World Cup. We have stores that sell food and drink from all around the world.

The Netherlands plays Spain: an excellent opportunity to drink Spanish wine and eat Dutch cheese.

As the matches line up, it’s fun to think of meals for those games that feature food and drink from the various countries.

Brazil, this Cup’s host, takes pride of place, so one can spotlight the vast world of Brazilian music and play that at every opportunity.

Ireland is not in the World Cup, and as my favorite, after the US, they deserve some recognition, so during games played on Bloomsday, some Irish drink will be had.

Why do I like the Netherlands? I’ve read about the “Total Football” concept the team used, I think during the ’70s. I don’t know exactly how it actually worked, but in my mind, the myth is that every player on the team has the freedom to roam at will, to attack, to defend, to cover the midfield. All 11 players would function as a smooth, cohesive, selfless unit, every player capable of playing every position with intelligence, sophistication, and skill. Such a team would run circles around other teams, who would never know what to expect.

If I ever coach junior soccer, we’re totally going Total Football.

When I am frustrated by rigid hierarchies and protocols, by rigidly defined roles that thwart the effectiveness of an organization, I think of Total Football.

In my house, when my wife and I are each cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, shopping, watching the kid and the dog, watering the plants, working, paying the bills, each of us doing everything without getting in each other’s way (except in our tiny kitchen), that’s Total Football.

May the officiating be fair, and may the best team win!

Our son George is a Seattleite, and his mother and I like that a lot, although neither she nor I, are, strictly speaking, Seattleites, though in our minds, we are, because Seattle is our home.

In this, the Space Age, humans have come to think of planet Earth as our home. On a personal level, to me this means that everything of Earth is mine: culture, religion, weather, history, flora and fauna, the future: all mine. Ours. And if I wind up at the other end of a wormhole, someone might ask, “Of all the infinite universes in the multiverse, which is your home?” “The one that has the Horse Nebula and planet Earth, the planet with Porter Wagoner,” I’ll say.

At the age of 2, George has had two homes: the condo we lived in when he was born, and the house we now have. Seeing that I live there, and all my stuff is there, it’s my home, but I’ve had many homes. So has my wife.

I lived in one house in Lake Hills from the age of 9 to the age of 20. That was my planet Earth in my universe of life. To get home, I drive up a hill to a cul-de-sac, and I can walk up some stairs to the front door, or walk through the gate beside the carport into the backyard and go in through the sliding glass door into the kitchen.

My house now has a driveway on the same side of the front door. The front door is just about in a straight line with the back sliding glass door, which is to the right of the kitchen. I noticed this straightaway when we first checked out our Olympic Hills house, because it aligns with the floor plan of my old Lake Hills home. Those similarities help me feel at home.

But in that house, the front door faced south. In our house, the house is right on the compass: the front faces west, the back faces east, south is to the left of the front door, north is to the right. Perfectly sensible.

George will have those intuitive rock-solid bearings. Someday he will probably live someplace where the setting Sun does not shine through the living room, nor the rising Sun shine through the kitchen windows and his bedroom window. He’ll be disoriented, the same way I’m disoriented when I go to Portland, Oregon, or Vancouver, B.C. and struggle to figure out which way is north, even when the Sun is out.

When adult George smells mint, and woodsmoke, he’ll feel at home. Our property abounds in wild mint, and when he falls off his hobby horse, he lands in mint. In the non-Summer, woodsmoke from neighbors’ chimneys is thick and ever present.

If George moves someplace not surrounded by trees, that absence will remind him that he once lived in a lusher, greener place.

If he lives in a house with multiple floors and staircases, and has kids, he’ll think, “We never had to deal with these kinds of things when I was a kid.”

In all the different rooms, he’ll think, “My house was never this quiet.”

In a studio apartment, he’ll think, “When I was a kid, my room was perfectly dark and perfectly quiet at night.”

Maybe he’ll drive by the house in 50 years, point to the intertwined copper and spearmint beech trees in the front yard, and say, “My dad always talked about how he brought those home as saplings from Volunteer Park, because they were some of his favorite trees in Seattle, and that was his choice to take the place of the fountain that used to be there, but my Mom didn’t like it, so we took it out back to grow strawberries in. Those two Douglas firs my parents got as saplings from the Portland Marathon, and that chestnut tree is from a chestnut tree also in Volunteer Park. All trees my folks planted as seeds and saplings right after we moved here way back in 2013! ”

Home is also a place of primordial fear. A house is a place of isolation. Only a few doors and windows come between a family and the thousands of bloodthirsty Orcs of the outside world.

A child gradually comes to realize that anything can sneak in through an open window, and no one might ever know what became of him. A child learns that even in the family, the older, the stronger, the smarter, victimize the younger, the weaker, the dumber.

In the family home, a child can learn what it means to have a family. But one can also learn what it means to be all alone, with no support from the very people he needs most.

When I die, I’ll instantly be someplace I’ll immediately recognize, I’ve long thought. I’ll realize that this life has ended, and I’ll feel at home where I wind up next. Perhaps it’ll be a place where I’ve lived for ages, among beings I’ll recognize as on-again, off-again eternal friends.

Maybe it’ll be a place where my mom and dad, and my brothers, and my wife and her family, our kids and relatives, will have barbecues in a backyard with trees and flowers, dogs and cats, sunlight and shade. It’s hard to imagine anyplace being more like home than a place like that!