After a short festive break, here we are: our #WordOfTheWeek for 2022. Welcome!

Our theme for this year is Joyful Sustainability. Why? Because joy is often at odds with sustainability. We want to reframe the relationship between the two words, and share how we will be embodying joyful sustainability as a team this year.

JOYFUL SUSTAINABILITY

Joyful is described as: feeling, expressing, or causing great pleasure and happiness. And at the start of 2021, we defined sustainability as: A state of being that respects and recognises that we are part of our environment (not separate to it) and seeks to maintain this existence in a holistic way by starting with us.

The work of climate, social and racial justice is sometimes filled with sadness, isolation, despair and disappointment. Systemic oppression is designed to strip us of our joy and rob us of everything that is sustainable. And in a world of hypervisibility and constantly having to be ‘on’, it can be easy to succumb to the pressures of performativity for the sake of being seen to be doing something, speaking up or taking a stance on the world’s many injustices.

Joyful sustainability is about acknowledging those experiences and taking a moment to pause. Pausing or stopping does not equate to not caring. There’s power in that pause. It can be the difference between being able to continue in the long-term or being overcome with burnout and toxicity.

It’s within that pause that we seek to course-correct and find moments of joy. Joyful sustainability is a reminder for us that there is pleasure and happiness to be had when we take a sustainable approach to everything we do. That doesn’t mean it won’t be challenging - joyful sustainability is a process and a practice, not an end-goal.

This also isn’t about toxic positivity (see our December posts for more on that!) But it is about sustaining ourselves. The choices we make every day contribute to our health and wellbeing in ways that lead to balance or imbalance. To choose joy, even in the moments of sadness or darkness, is to choose hope.

CRITICAL THINKING

Critical thinking is the practice of resisting assumptions, considering alternative perspectives, and doing your research to form an objective conclusion.

The term is closely associated with the world of academia and professional settings, where balanced and carefully evidenced arguments are highly valued for credibility. But there are many uses for critical thinking in our everyday lives that we may not have thought of.

When we have an abundance of information at our fingertips, it can be difficult to verify what is a credible source. It becomes easy to get swept up in populism and echo chambers rather than doing due diligence and making sure our information sources are accurate. Our opinions end up being formed by misinformation, or only partial information.

One unfortunate consequence of this is that we become polarised. Rather than building capacity and making space for difference in our own lives, we end up demonising or dehumanising people who hold opinions different to our own or who experience the world differently.

Critical thinking is one of the most important tools to know ourselves better so we may better understand others.

It is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. (Source: Criticalthinking.org)

In other words, it involves having a sense of agency, awareness and, importantly, openness to changing your opinion when you receive and process new information. It’s a responsibility you have to take for yourself. And it’s a practice, which means we have to work at it every single day - it’s an ongoing process, rather than an end-goal.

CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION

Conscious consumption is an umbrella term that means engaging in the economy with more awareness of how your consumption impacts society at large. (Source: NYTimes)

Conscious means ‘aware of and responding to one's surroundings’, and in the context of an action or feeling, it means deliberate and intentional.

Consumption is the action of using up a resource, of eating or drinking something, the purchase of goods and services by the public, and the reception of information or entertainment.

In modern society, conscious consumption takes effort.

Hundreds of marketing and advertising messages land in the palms of our hands via our smartphones and devices. We’re targeted, aggressively, every minute of every day, by brands leveraging data, algorithms and carefully crafted messaging. We scroll through other people’s feeds and posts wondering why their life is so much better than our own.

This post is written at the end of January; how many Valentine’s Day marketing messages have you come across already in the past few days?

Being targeted in this way sparks in us an irresistible desire to amass material possessions. We aspire to be like those who appear to have things and lifestyles we don’t have. It becomes easy to spend money without thinking about it.

Conscious consumption is a practice. It’s about making small choices that lead to a greater shift in our relationship to the planet and to each other.

Whether you choose to spend more for sustainably and ethically made clothing, are a keen neighbourhood freecycler, or boycott brands who exploit their workers, it’s important to recognise that conscious consumption is not always accessible to everyone.

In the spirit of joyful sustainability, conscious consumption isn’t about punishing or placing judgement – either on yourself or towards others. It is about finding ways to balance what brings you joy while being aware of our interconnectedness, and understanding that everyone is on their own journey.

Our mission at The Other Box is to make space for difference. Diversity Dictionary is where we explore meanings and histories of the language of diversity, beyond a dictionary definition, so we can all build a deeper awareness and critical understanding of perspectives that may be different to our own.

On all our social channels, we share weekly words and their definitions, with a different theme each month. These terms are a taster and have been taken from our Diversity Dictionary™ course in our TOB for Teams™ programme. If you'd like to learn more, check out our courses page and fill in the contact form. 

Is there a theme you’d like to see covered in Diversity Dictionary? Let us know! Our work is co-created by our community to work towards creating a world that is more inclusive and safe for everyone.

Words by Roshni Goyate

Header image by Shane Rounce on Unsplash