The word “sustainability” is taking root in society. Along with the word “green,” it is becoming the official term of art for the cultural transformation we need to survive on this planet. The question is, though, amid its popularity, what does it mean? Or more precisely, what do people think when they hear the word “sustainability”? And what does that predict about our ability to make the societal changes necessary to heal the earth?

Dr. Daniel Sherman, a professor of environmental policy and decision-making at the University of Puget Sound, asked this very question to members of his campus community and came up with a challenging finding. “The dominant association,” he writes of the word ‘sustainability’, “is a list of prescribed practices for [people] to adopt, or feel guilty for failing to adopt.”

There is good news here, and not-so-good news. The good news is that people are increasingly convinced that there is a problem and that they can, and should, do something about it.  In response, sometimes they do; and sometimes they don’t. (Wait. That’s still part of the good news.)

The not-so-good news, he suggests, is that this to-do list approach either supplants or defers a deeper understanding of the true meaning. Sustainability does not, after all, mean an isolated list of discrete things to do. It reflects a 360 degree attitude that guides the everyday acts of our lives. It is a belief that we need to use things fairly, wisely and well today so that others can use them fairly, wisely and well tomorrow. To treat sustainability as a list of “shoulds” is imagining it to be so much less than it is.

While not great news, this is not bad news either. For sometimes, lists can transcend themselves.  When we begin to learn something, we often begin with lists. As a child we are taught to say thank you, I am sorry, and please in certain situations. But we also learn, as we grow older, that those words are not isolated acts, not numbered items on a limited to-do list of politeness. Rather, they are markers, symbols, of deeper, intersecting values of gratitude, remorse, humility, caring, kindness. What begins with lists can morph into values and beliefs that define our lives.  Put another way, over time, we become what we do. And one day, we realize we no longer need to check the list to know how to behave.

Sometimes, though, lists never rise above themselves. They remain external enumerations of things that we might forget if we don’t write them down. In such a case, they never transcend their particularity. They never become more than the things they are. We never see the big picture. They do not change our spirit or the way we choose to live on this earth. 

Perhaps what Dr. Sherman’s findings are telling us is not that sustainability is misunderstood, but rather that it is in its first stage of absorption. We may in fact be on the way to making the values of sustainability part of our personal and cultural identity. If we successfully make that transformation, we are witnessing the birth of a new era. Let’s do it.