Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle provides another large piece of the puzzle for those confronting the challenge of living a creative, innovative life. While I’m not quite ready to start making my own cheese or plant a massive garden in my backyard, I think the principles underlying the book speak to a deeper need within each of us.

It’s about sustainability. Sustainability is not just conservation—using less—it is about living in a way that is balanced. It’s about thinking of the consequences of our actions and avoiding waste wherever we can. It’s not about being judgmental—it’s about looking within and understanding the tradeoffs we are making and choosing to live responsibly rather than defaulting to what popular culture tells us is acceptable.

Kingsolver and her family decided to spend a year eating only locally-grown food. The book is essentially a diary of that year illustrating what life was like after having made that commitment. They survived and thrived. But it is a significantly more difficult challenge than I think most people are ready to undertake. . Life was not hard for them, but a lot of work was involved and a huge amount of “knowing what to do,” coupled with an even larger “learning what to do next.” But it is not impossible, given enough time.

Time is the killer. How can I shop at a farmer’s market in the afternoon when it is a 30-minute train ride away from my work place? I have to leave early to get to our CSA farm before they close. How could I possibly find the time to grow my own produce, then preserve it for the winter?

Many of us have jobs that pay enough money to avoid having to deal with all the stuff that our grandparents “suffered” through. And perhaps a few “post-materialist” types, secure in their independent means, have blazed a trail back to nature that is occasionally followed by the guilty urbanites for whom green living is the latest fad in a search for authentic living.

I take a swipe at the “superficially green” not to be mean or judgmental, but to challenge us all to look a little deeper and think about a whole new (to us) way of thinking that can help us find more meaning in life. Should I buy a Prius so my commute burns less gas? Or should I say, I need to find a job that doesn’t involve commuting?

The revolution in thinking is to take responsibility for our lives and realize to live is to create, not consume. Trading our time for money so we can spend it on crap that may have a slightly less detrimental impact on the environment is a terribly inefficient life. When our jobs allow us to create, we get the best of both worlds; but if we find ourselves pursuing greater success at the expense of less time, we start to realize we cannot buy the time back.