Compassionate Connecting: Bowling Water Bottles

About Compassionate Connecting

"Compassionate Connecting" describes our intention to facilitate communication and contribute to deepening relationships between people, within groups and organizations through the practice of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) GiraffeSurfer@gmail.com

What is Nonviolent Communication (NVC)?
NVC is a form of language based on work by Marshall Rosenberg that is sometimes called compassionate communication. Its purpose is to strengthen our ability to inspire compassion from others and to respond compassionately to others and to ourselves. NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves and hear others by focusing on what we are observing, feeling, needing and requesting.

Surfing Metaphor
I like to use waves as a symbol for needs, and "Compassionate Connecting" is the surfboard. The challenge then becomes how to catch the wave so that we can all surf -- to connect and stay connected to others even as we identify our conflicting strategies. Once we each truly hear each others needs, finding mutually satisfying strategies is much more likely than before.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Bowling Water Bottles - Recycling Day

The empty water bottles were packed and stacked on top of each other; they kept falling over in my garage as the mountain of plastic grew. My son Alex said to me "Dad, you really need to recycle those..." So, yesterday we did recycle them, but not before we had a little fun. Alex wanted to stack the bottles up in a pyramid structure, and toss a bowling ball at them. I let him try, but those things don't stack because they don't hold their shape (i.e. they are single use -- they were designed to only be used once, and then they are to be discarded).

So, he tried the next best thing -- he stacked the boxes and bags of bottles on top of each other, and bowled them away. Here's the video:

For us, it was a symbolic goodbye to the single-use water bottle -- as we took the Surfrider Foundation pledge to drink only out of reusable containers.

NVC encourages us to get our needs met, but only if it also meets the needs of others (i.e. not at the expense of others). I was drinking out of single use bottles to get my need for "ease" met -- (i.e. the bottles are pretty darn convenient). I realized that the plastic bottles adversely affects the environment and wildlife creating a problem for me -- it does not meet my needs for integrity, mutuality, and contributing to the wellbeing of others.

As I read more information about plastic, I also discovered that there are also health risks to using them, especially when the plastic bottles are subjected to heat. I used to keep a case of bottled water in my back seat, but started to notice that the water tasted funny after they had been sitting in my car in the Southern California heat -- now I know why :-(

I'd enjoy hearing how any of this strikes you.