Setting an Example

The last few days I have been thinking about what sort of example have I been setting for the people around me?

If I had lots of kids, that's one way a person could expect to have a large influence on the younger generation.  But I have just one kid!  Unfortunately, on one hand—in terms of humor, and speech, and music—I think she does follow my example.  And also in less positive ways: e.g. she tends to be a hoarder, like I used to be :(

One way in which I would have been gratified to be followed, is to have as small carbon footprint as possible.  * We have very fuel-efficient cars.  * Our home is entirely electric; at the moment, that means that our home heating is only as energy-efficient as the electric company, so we've put our efficiency in one basket, so to speak.  We use as many LED lamps as we can, and so on.  * My child went to the public school.  It's a free country, so we have the right to send kids to any school.  But by sending our child to the public school, we were investing in a resource that was publicly available, rather than a private resource.  On the other hand, my kid revealed that she was relentlessly bullied while at school, (something that—one hopes—does not happen in a Catholic school, for instance; but who are we kidding?  It probably does happen in most schools.)

* I commuted to work using a bike, or a bus,  for a while.  But that takes planning; I was running late so often, I had to race to work in my car. 

I can't think of too many other things I could report to you without it sounding like bragging.  I don't think I'm cut out to be an influencer.  That seems to be a role at which women are more successful, anyway.  I don't know whether women are interested in influencing their followers to maintain any sort of smaller footprint; their success seems to be measured by the size of their footprint; the larger, the better!

Anyway, I urge any of my readers who are influencers even in a small way to keep an eye on positive influences they could model. 

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