Our Choices Do Make A Difference

One of the things I enjoy most is having the ability and motivation to make a difference. Whether it’s through lifestyle choices I make at home or sharing information about Young Living Essential Oils (YLEO) with others that help them achieve the changes they seek to make – there is nothing more rewarding than knowing you are making a significant difference on many levels.

One of the things I find unique about YLEO, compared to other companies, is the people who are attracted. I mean, here we have a founder, Gary Young, who actually works in the fields, in the distilleries, he thinks nothing of hopping in a rickety old boat and going down an Amazon river to trek through remote jungles where extremely few white people have ever visited so he can find and learn about new healing plants.

“You distributors have no idea what we go through to get these oils.” ~ Gary Young

And there are the distributors, who sign up for a drawing, praying for the chance to sleep in a tent and work in 90* F temperatures for a week harvesting lavender. Or, to harvest Idaho Balsam Fir in Idaho in January in 0* F temperatures. Or, go into the jungle in 100* F heat and 100 percent humidity and treking through rainforests, mud up to their knees, for the opportunity to hangout with Gary Young and learn about plants and oils in their natural habitats.

This is not a company and group of people who are afraid to get their hands dirty or their hair messed up!

YLEO is also a company who takes into account the importance of true organic practices and sustainability.

While I watched Ken Burns “The National Parks” on PBS I was thinking about my choices:

My Lifestyle: what more can I do spiritually and physically to increase my happiness and fulfill my needs, without compromising my values.

Living in Harmony with Our Land: as a classical Feng Shui practitioner and nature person, can I minimize my impact even further?

My Work: I feel Young Living and I are in alignment regarding values and standards, what more can I do to help others and how can I spread the word even more so we can prevent the feather and hat type of situations (story below).

Though I do realize not everyone is going to care as much about the things I am passionate about, I still remain hopeful that many more will connect with the types of things that provide more meaning and significance in life. It seems rather obvious that the state we find ourselves in these days is a direct reflection of our disconnect from what John Muir referred to as ‘Natures Cathedral.’

Land, Love, and Respect, the Feathers in Our Hats

In the late 1800s/early 1900s, when Victorian fashion was at its height of its most gaudy and physically uncomfortable for women, it was feathers in our hats that nearly brings me to tears. Yes, those beautiful plumes that fantastically adorned womens hats in the most artistic of ways has the most hideous history.

It was about this same time the Audubon Society was formed and they were making an attempt to educate the public that these glorious hats were at the expense of North American birds. It is said that the price of the pure white feathers of the Egret brought higher prices than gold at the time and in Florida it was estimated that 95% of the states birds were killed, while sitting on their nests with eggs and chicks, for the feather market to adorn womens hats.

The Audubon Society had no luck at getting their message out to women.

The instant I heard that fact I felt disgusted and said, “we haven’t learned a thing from our mistakes.”

Ironically, in “The National Parks”series are narrations from John Muir (The Writings of John Muir and the Unpublished Journals of John Muir reprinted through Google Books) and him discovering Natures Cathedral among the tall Sequoia trees of Yosemite. Where he would spend his life lecturing and fighting for people to stop and look at what was around them. Primarily through the help of Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Lacey, we today have National Parks.

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” ~ Aldo Leopold

While most children my age, 5 years old, were playing with dolls, I was taking out of the library record albums on bird song. I wanted nothing more than to learn the song of the birds, their language in melody. And when I wasn’t listening to their songs and calls, I was exploring the neighboring field and woods as my colorful feathered friends flitted overhead.

My most exciting day was chasing after a male Goldfinch, I wanted to see where he was going when I spotted a most beautiful rainbow over my head. While I was trying to decide which one to run after the Goldfinch miraculously turned and headed straight in the direction where the rainbow appeared to be touching the ground in the woods. I ran and ran. Then found myself standing in the woods, without sight of the rainbow, pot of gold, or the Goldfinch. I searched around a while looking to see if the Leprechaun’s were still hanging around with the pot of gold, I was certain they would be waiting for me to present their gift. After a while I headed back home.

Being a life long birder and nature lover, hearing about the hats I couldn’t help but think how our ignorance can so easily cause extinction in a few short years. Such as that of the Passenger Pigeon…

“Men still live who, in their youth remember pigeons; trees still live that, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.

We grieve because no living man will ever see again the onrush of victorius birds, sweeping a path for spring across the March skies, chasing the defeated winter from all of the woods and prairies.

There will always be pigeons in books and in museums but they are dead to all hardships and to all delights. They cannot dive out of a cloud, nor clap their wings in thunderous applause. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather, they live forever by not living at all.”
From a Monument to the Passenger Pigeon, Aldo Leopold, 1947

The beautiful, and sometimes strange creatures we share this earth with are all here for a reason. Sometimes I wonder if ‘their’ purpose is more clearly defined than our own. They instinctually know precisely what they need to do at any point in time, whereas we can easily befuddle ourselves and get in our own way.

I wish The National Parks series also included the stories and experiences of the Native Americans, who lived harmoniously with this environment for centuries, by some archaeologist estimates for nearly 30,000 years. Many of whose tribes went extinct with the arrival of settlers. While others, like the Cherokee, have lost much of their heritage and wisdom because they were forbidden to tell their stories and speak their native language.

The Great Smoky Mountains, some of the oldest mountains in the world once about as tall as the Himalayan mountains, boasting the largest bio-diversity of plants, old growth trees (striped from the land by early settlers), insects and invertebrates in all of North America deserves a great deal of love and respect. I have heard that it is quite likely that the first people of the earth may have originated here on Turtle Island. Imagine the stories the native people could have shared had they and the first setters found a way to get along with the natives. I believe native people, no matter which country, know much more about the lands from which they originated, than any settler could ever discover or learn.

There was a part of me that was not looking forward to The National Park series that night, featuring the Smoky Mountains. I know a bit concerning what has been lost – trees thousands of years old chopped down to make ships and houses, the Trail of Tears, the enormous soil erosion which took place after thousands of acres were deforested, striped totally bare. Additionally, it is estimated that in these mountains there quite possibly could be over 90,000 species of plants, fungi, invertebrate, and insect that haven’t yet been discovered – thus rivaling that of the Amazon Rainforests.

When I look around at our planet today I see so much that is changed by our hand. So much is squandered, ruined, and exploited for trend and monetary gain. I so much detest the advertising of today, the lies and manipulations, everything from Monsanto and coal to produce electricity …

…I would rather have mountains than dirty electricity, if I had to choose between the two.

Evelyn Vincent

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Articles by Evelyn Vincent, Young Living Independent Distributor #476766

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"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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