How an avatar can inspire you to use less plastic
Do you enjoy going down the rabbit hole and looking at the gazillions of pictures available on the Net? Inspiring, eye-opening, mind-blowing. Seeing through the eyes of a billion other humans is fascinating.
If you are a visual thinker, this is for you. It is something you can also easily do with children. You will need to put a bit of time aside for it. Not too long, let’s say 1/2hr.
“I am a visual thinker, not a language-based thinker, my brain is like Google images. You put in a key word, it brings up pictures. “
Mary Temple Grandin
I sometimes print out some pictures to make “idea boards” when I am stuck for inspiration, when I want to understand more about a subject or when I simply want to get a feel for a certain mood. Letting my eyes meander onto images helps me understand what I cannot express in words. Pictures can leave a very powerful imprint on our minds.
Cut panels and strips
1 – Dive In
For what we want to do today, you will need acccess to a computer. Grab your phone/tablet and go out there (figuratively speaking) looking for sea life. Just google : “marine life” “sea creatures” “fish” “marine mammal” or something similar and select the images button underneath the search box. Your screen will populate with thousands of amazingly beautiful and weird creatures. Dive in. Go under the surface and spend some time scrolling down the big Blue. At some point choose a fish, a marine mammal, a coral, a shellfish, a sea bird, whatever you want. If you let this happen naturally your creature will stand out in the middle of the others. You will want to come back to its picture or look at it for longer. For whatever reason, you react to this creature more than you do to others. Don’t try to understand why, don’t judge, just choose the creature that stopped you.
Clicking on that particular picture will hopefully take you to a place where you can learn the proper scientific name of your creature.
2 – Keep going down
It is time to do a second search with that name. This will narrow down, to pictures of that particular creature. Again, spend some time scrolling down. You will see your animal pictured in many different life situations, eating, fighting, or just being. It will be caring for its young, playing, resting, hunting. It will be alone or in its community, old or young, wounded or in full health.
At some point choose one photo. Choose a close-up. Something like a portrait is best.
That photo is important.
It has to be much more than technically or artistically stunning. In fact it doesn’t need to be a “good” photo. Excellence is common occurence online but that is not what we are after here. The photo you choose has to speak to you in a different way. Actually, its only role is to trigger a feeling of connection. You won’t choose the “beautiful picture” of a dolphin, a clown fish, a seagull or an octopus. No, you will choose the picture that stops you because you feel like you “know” that particular dolphin, clown fish, seagull or octopus.
The photo you select is important, it must inspire a feeling of connection, trigger the urge to care.
3 – Name Your New Friend
You want to find a name the is elegant, cute, funny, powerful, or simply beautiful. Give attention to the name, it needs to create an emotion in you. It should inspire love and respect. It can be the name of a famous person you look up to, maybe the name of a loved one who passed away, it can be the name you would choose for a new kitten or a name that makes you smile. Find a name you associate with someone you deeply care for, someone with whom it is easy to have an uncomplicated relationship. Names are a very powerful way to convey meaning.
When you say the name, it should sound familiar, as if you had been close friends for many years.
If you want, you can also look for a meaningful quote about caring you can add to your picture. There are lots of nice green quotes here.
4 – Carry your friend’s photo close to your heart
When you have your picture, your name and your quote, use Canva or a similar app to create a nice layout. If you aren’t computer savvy, use scissors and glue. The resulting montage can be used in various ways.
The best way to use the pic of your friend is to carry it in your purse so you have to handle it when you go shopping. Some banks offer the option of printing a picture of your choice on their debit/credit cards. Get creative, you can set it as the wallpaper on your phone, your can print it and use it as cover of a journal, your can carry a small size version of the photo close to your heart, like you would do for friend or family, you can stick it on your fridge, wear it as a brooch, place it in your shopping list pad…
The main thing is to have a constant reminder about your marine friend. Especially when you are about to go shopping as it is usually where single-use plastic is most present.
Examples of quotes
- You matter.
- Don’t be the one who says the river is dirty, be the one who cleans it up.
- When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
- Everyday is Earth day.
- Be the change.
- To make a difference, you just have to care.
- It is not how much you do, but how much care you put in the doing.
- Be kind.
- Guard the life of another creature as you would do your own. Because it is your own.
- The ocean belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.
- Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains.
- Don’t sit this one out. Do something.
- Do good.
- Do something green today.
Next time you are at the store, mechanically grabbing that plastic bag you do not need, bring to mind your friend struggling in the plastic soup.
Out there in the Big Blue Ocean.
You might well catch yourself putting that plastic bag down.
My friends are yours!
Click on each card, right-click and copy the picture of your new friend.
BOB
LEOPOLD Junior
PIP
Miss MARTHA
Colonel BERNARD
JOSEPHINE
