A little slice of outside

                I work in non-profit, currently for one of the larger non-profits dedicated to environmentalism, energy efficiency and sustainability in NYC.  And yet for the past year+ I’ve been in a 15x15 room with 3 other people, concrete block walls, fluorescent lighting, carpet my boss thinks is growing mold, and nothing else.  No window.  OK we had an air conditioner, but we needed a space heater during the winter, and the room gets so stuffy that we were running the air conditioner on 70 degree days.  Last summer the company participated in an energy challenge with 3 other companies, calculating energy usage and then challenging the employees to work towards reducing our energy load.  Thankfully there were no electric meters hooked up in our little dungeon hole, because with the constant air conditioning and the lack of natural light there was no way we would be helping our company win.  Somehow though, the rest of the office did manage to pull out a win.  Meanwhile we were languishing in our hole, not missing the irony of an environmental org locking us in a dark dank dungeon.

                Last month, the most amazing thing happened, and one of the senior people in the office asked if there was anything that could be done to improve our space?  She was thinking a coat of paint, a plant (that was only going to die) or who knows what else.  What easy fix could there be?  So with nothing to lose we jokingly asked for a window.  We have an exterior wall, it just happens to be a solid wall of cmu’s, not something you can idly cut through in an afternoon.  And yet behold the new sight!  Because apparently yes, an organization that specializes in retrofits of buildings to increase energy efficiency, that replaces windows regularly, can in fact cut a hole in a concrete block wall.  We left one Friday, after having moved some furniture around, and when we returned on Monday there was a window!

                Fresh air, natural light, and a view of… the amazing BQE!  Ok, not the best site, lots of traffic noise, and there’s probably some fumes getting in through the window, but at least now we have a little slice of the outside world.  Our dungeon is no longer dark and dank.  Now its bright and dank!

                The point is that now we’re happier.  It’s a primal thing, a psychological thing.  It may not be the best view (in fact we can see a rooftop bar from our window, which may make working afternoons and evenings this summer even more difficult than before the window), but it’s a window.  It’s a little slice of the environment, of the natural world.  And that’s important.  It’s important to have that connection, to feel fresh air and be able to hear the rain fall, and see the sunshine (not much sunshine, it’s a north facing window), and to have some notion of the natural world.  We need to protect this, because the post-apocalyptic future described by Philip K Dick and Isaac Asimov and probably tons of others, where there is no outside, and all of society is trapped in these indoor mega cities does not sound like a happy thing.  I don’t want the environment to degrade to such a state that the air is pure nitrogen, or sulfur, or carbon dioxide, or some combination of other chemicals that we can’t breathe, that plants can’t live in, that the whole planet shrivels up and dies.  I don’t want acid rain to be normal.  I want to be able to cut a hole in my wall, make a window and be happy about what I see outside!

                That’s the extreme, mega cities with no possibility of ever going outside, or seeing the outside.  But the extreme sometimes happens.  Close your eyes, and wish away all the bad stuff… and you stop paying attention long enough to stop the bad stuff.  Now is the time to open your eyes, bust a hole in the wall so you can finally see outside, and make a difference.