SuperForest

(via flickr user Shniks)

Good day, SuperForest!

About a year ago, before checking my email, one of Yahoo!’s headlines caught my eye: “2009 Horoscope”. I usually pay no attention to these sorts of things but as it so often happens with those headlines, the temptation was too strong and I clicked. The message was simple and ambiguous (as most horoscopes are), but I appreciated the positive vibe and decided to save it for future reference.

A few days ago, while clearing out my old laptop I found the old document and with a quizzical mind, opened it up. My jaw dropped. And immediately I started making connections and reflections.

Brilliant ideas come easily into Libra’s awareness throughout 2009. As you trust your higher self and allow thoughts to flow freely, you are able to embrace new opportunities and make positive changes in your life. You come to a higher level of understanding and appreciation as you let go of old ideas. You’re no longer separated from what you want as you to detach from limiting thoughts, bringing you a new spiritual perspective of feeling fully supported and loved.

As you stay centered within your core, your highest ideals manifest, and you have the ability to help others realize their interconnectedness, and bring balance into their lives. Your efforts bring you into a more stable way of working than ever before, an important development, what with all the changes occurring this year.

You are a natural conduit, and you are able to receive messages that will help you grow in every area of your life. You have a strong inner sense of direction for where life is going, so trust and allow your struggles to be released.

2009 was a year of inner growth and big questions. Questions bigger than anything I’ve ever faced. Questions like: “What do I want to do with my life?” “Do I follow my heart or my head?” “When do I go to grad school?” “What will I study” “Where?” The list goes on and on and as it multiplied, it grew increasingly menacing.

Lucky for me, 2009 was also a year of friendship. It goes without say, but the people I surround myself with on a day-to-day basis, are an absolutely wonderful bunch of folks and I am perpetually grateful toward them. And this, of course, applies to my SuperForest teammates as well. I’ll never forget the first video conference with SuperForester Julius, picking up SuperForester Chris at the Oceanside train station and rushing over to Jitters to set up our gear for the conversation with SuperForester Jason, or my clear understanding of the definition of “meet shock” while pacing back and forth behind my door after SuperForester Jackson called informing me he was walking down my driveway the first time we met back in March.

These fine cats helped me realize something important. Yes, it was a year of uncertainty but for all of the questions I had, with one thing I was quite certain. I would acknowledge the fact that all of the tumultuous and exciting happenings of the past had prepared me for the present moment. That is why this year I resolve to simply, trust life. Because the directions in which I will travel may be uncertain, but the mindset with which I approach it (and the people I will continue to journey with) is anything but.

Looking back, I realize that my reading that 2009 horoscope put me in a mindset that made me conscious of those things and probably made me subconsciously attract those them…like an affirmation of sorts.

A suggestion: Rather than listing your resolutions, write your own 2010 horoscope this year.

• For quick inspiration on resolutions, visit this charming website via swissmiss!
• And for tips on how to stick to your resolutions, check out Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits!

Love to everyone that made 2009 so amazing! (If you are reading this, I most certainly mean you.)

In ever-present love and gratitude, I wish you a marvelous, joy-filled 2010!

Yay!!!

-SuperForester Carla

P.S. And for those of you already thinking about 2012…

(via.)

“I can scarely wait till tomorrow

when a new life begins for me

as it does each day

as it does each day”    –Stanley Kunitz

I joined SuperForest shortly after the start of 2009. As always, it’s strange to look back, strange to look through a lens of reminiscence at the Januarys of our lives. I think that’s the point: this year I’ve come to realize that the present is what is most important. Hopefully, when I look back at 2009 at any given point of my life I can think, “I was me. I was that I was.” Or, put more simply: “I had fun.” I learned. I expressed. I met some very cool people, and I can say with certainty that I grew more open, more accepting. Or maybe those were already there, and I simply let them ‘out’.

Dear Superforest,

I’m in a reflective mood. Let’s play mirror to experience. My year began in Kauai and will end in North Carolina, in my girlfriend’s hometown. In between I graduated from university, ventured into foreign lands and returned to these native United States. This has without a question been the most dramatic, exciting and redefining rotation around the Sun I have yet experienced.

As with so many, my graduation resulted with a grand question: “What now?” The only answer that sufficed for me was “Move.” And, so, I did. I was lucky enough to spend more than 6 weeks of this year in the island paradise of Kauai with my incomperable sister. Time in that rooted place served to balance out the intellectual wanderings of my mind that so much constituted my time in school. With cultivation of that balance in mind, I set out for Europe, where I sought to teach English and be wonderfully, radically, independent.  And then I fell in love.
Rough.

It is a not uncommon affliction, the sort of thing that comes around once in a while, like a bird-related flu, a sort of em-fun-zhema. Suddenly, my time for study and creation was all swallowed up (and the thus a lack of posts, but I digress). I found my mind consistently occupied by this young woman. Soon, we were in southern Bohemia.

There I read of a holistic remedy used to keep the mind of a young lover still. I should have taken notes.

And so, in the spring, I will be heading away from these United States yet again. I head west, to the East —to South Korea, one of the Asian Dragons, a country of mountains and manufacturing, Confucious and computing, kim chi and creativity. With the aforementioned dame, I’ll be diving in. Next stop, Seoul.

Love,

Drake

Last year this time I wrote a post similar to this one. Regarding the year’s ending. I cited a piece of my paper where the author compared 2008 to 1938, both years people would have no idea what was in store for them next year. I’m happy to announce that the 2009 crisis wasn’t as bad as the one of 1929. In fact there are lots of things I’m happy about when thinking of 2009. Obama was inaugurated and – knowing some people will disagree with this – I think he made good decisions (Guantanamo and the war he received on his plate upon becoming president aren’t easy to solve, rather think of the reformation of the health system). In my personal life there were highlights as well, both a high school diploma and a significant other came on my path of life. Looking at it like this it has been a pretty good year.

SuperForest had a few good moments as well. In January last year Jackson and I realized this new website you’re looking at (which is, and will always be a work in progress, but a good work in progress), in June I visited Jackson in New York where the two of us had the greatest time. In September I started going to university and along with that came a lot of good ideas for SuperForest. I started communicating them and right now we’re at the point of having conference calls and discussions about what to do next. I really feel like we’re getting somewhere.

2009 had lots of goodness in it. Though every time I read or heard about not-so-fun news that involved individuals (divorces, teenagers acting up: Dr. Phil stuff) I sensed that something was going systematically wrong. Yesterday I found out what it was.

I was almost randomly clicking buttons on the internet and I landed on the twitter page of an old friend. The so-called tweets contained the usual teenage brag (complaints about doing stuff for the parents) but also very personal stuff regarding relationships. Apparently, in the 211th decade 140 characters are enough to talk about those things. For me this is symbolic for communication. When we boot our computers we visit twitter to read what our friends did last night. So when we run in to them and they start telling us about the unbelievably cool party they went to we can say: “Yes, I know! I read it on your twitter.”

A few weeks ago I was watching TV, a Dutch talk show. The guest is a successful Dutch internet entrepreneur and while he was sitting in the studio, while the host and other guests were talking to him, he grabbed his phone to send 140 characters to twitter.

What happened to good old fashioned conversation? Is our need for followers bigger then our need for good conversation? It doesn’t take a master in psychology to see that this isn’t a good advancement. Imagine how many misunderstandings good conversation can prevent, how many social conflicts could be solved with it. What would happen with the support for the Iraq war if everybody started conversing at a high intensity?

Let’s start talking, and let us go on until any conflict has been resolved, let’s go on until every single inhabitant of the Earth understands all the others. Because we’re not alone, we’re all in this together.

Happy New Year,

Julius

Evening, SuperForest!

If ever you find yourself in a rut, it’s a pretty safe bet to assume Sesame Street has got an answer for you. This clip, in particular, addresses an intense insomnia that grips our protagonist, Elmo. For any of you grappling with a similar problem, here is Ricky Gervais with “Celebrity Lullaby”.

Sweet dreams. <3

So, you’ve been reading SuperForest for awhile now. You’ve showed your friends, posted it on your blog, and now you’re wondering what else you can do to spread the ‘good’ word — and have fun at the same time. The answer is simple: live like a SuperForester. Meet new people, like-minded people who own businesses, coffee shops, or a dry cleaner, in your community, who live SuperForesty without even knowing what SuperForest is. Need a ‘reason’ to? Here’s one: you can ask them if it would be reasonable for you to post the SuperForest Humanifesto in their much unused window space or bulletin boards.

This way, people completely unaware of SuperForest, who might not even use a computer, can grasp a message that is highly universal. It’s free and friendly advertising (what an ugly word…), and a great way to learn about places you didn’t even know existed a mile from your house. It can be intimidating, maybe, to ask, so start with places that have free community bulletin boards. For example, I know Whole Foods has a board, so I plan to put one up the next time I’m there. If you’re a college student, why not post one or six in the quad? Be creative. Make your own.

A few months ago, we introduced “SuperForest Street Team” as a way for SuperForesters worldwide to become active participants in improving their environment. We will start small, start with improvements in our everyday surroundings, and then eventually work our way up to bigger and more collaborative missions. Therefore, for the first mission, we felt it would be appropriate to start with the Humanifesto.

For all that want to participate, here is what you’ve gotta do:

Step One: Print the Humanifesto. (Preferably on recycled paper or the flip side of a used one)

Step Two: Visit your favorite public spot (bathroom mirrors, community bulletin boards, libraries, coffee shops, school campuses, etc.) and post it up.

Step Three: If you’d like, take a picture of yourself with the Humanifesto in its new home.

Step Four: Email it to us and we will post it up on SuperForest!

Sound good? The picture is optional. But here’s what’s mandatory: you gotta have fun.

Have a great week,

Team SuperForest

Good Evening Glorious, Golden SuperForesters!

If you’ve read some of my posts you might have realised that two of the things I’m excited about are the weather (I blame being British – we shut down for a flurry of snow and strip to bikinis for a day of sun!;) and super-obvious, ‘duh?!’ ways of changing our behaviour to benefit ourselves and the planet (the modern-classic toilet hack? shower peeing? unpackaged goods? hang dry your laundry?).  Well, today I learned about the “Close the Door” campaign, combining two of my favourite topics in asking retailers to save energy by closing their doors in the winter. I know, right?  Yep, shops with inviting open doors, pumping the heat at full blast whilst the poor shop assistants wear fleeces (or, you know, I guess if you live somewhere sunny you might be more concerned with air-con’s futile attempts to cool the street. I’m using my imaginative powers of empathy here;)  – I walk past it every day.

Research published this month by business price comparison service Make it Cheaper found that the average internal temperature of the shops it studied on London’s Oxford Street was 23.6°C. That is more than five degrees warmer than the ideal ambient shopping temperature of 18°C, as recommended by the Chartered Institute for Building Services Engineers.

So why do shops do it? Unsurprisingly, the answer is money: apparently consumer research shows that an open door is an invitation to enter and a closed door says move along, nothing to buy here. I’m pretty surprised by this – if you can see (maybe by a big “OPEN” sign) that a store is open, why would you bypass it? But I’m also kind of excited by this: if we are the reason given for the status quo, then WE are the ones with the power to change it!

Close the Door approaches retailers directly and so far lovely Neal’s Yard and fancy Jaeger have signed up (plus some stores like Marks & Spencer that simply have closed doors), but I reckon we can make a difference ourselves. Do you work in a store or restaurant, or know someone who owns one, or even just frequent one?  Why couldn’t we, in the nicest possible way, next time we’re passing and feel the hot gust of air on our street-chilled faces just… close the door? then ask for the floor manager, compliment her on the job she’s doing,  and offer them the exciting opportunity to save energy, save the company money AND keep themselves toastier?

Love to you

P

Goooooood Afternoon, SuperForest!

We’ve formatted the SuperForest Humanifesto to fit into one page for use in phase two of the Let’s Globalize the Humanifesto project! The details for the project are coming soon but until then…

Kapow!

The downloadable pdf file! (Click to download)

Do with it what you wish. It is yours to print and share.

Love from San Diego,

SuperForesters Chris, Iman, and Carla

Yay! One of my all-time favorite groups singing a great song. The last of the Clancy brothers, sweet old Liam Clancy, passed away this month…

(image via Jason DeFillippo)

“Let’s not have a sniffle…
Let’s have a bloody good cry!”

Too true…