Last night I wandered around Half Price Books for about two hours and came across a book, "The Meaning of Life," by David Friend and the Editors of LIFE (published back in 1991).

Who knew a $1.00 clearance book could inspire of a variety of insight. One in particular caught my attention as I currently read further into sustainability practices and corporate strategy.

Robert Longo's perspective on the meaning of life and chance to save the planet illustrates the power of creative writing -- where the resonance of words can pause readers to reflect and apply the perspective in their own lenses.

No green-washing propaganda here, just a good dosage of creativity.

Enjoy:

"You're walking through the forest. There's trees falling down, animal carcasses. Then there's this rusty coke can. You can barely notice it. Now, is the Coke can nature-- or culture? Part of the underlying 'why' for our being here comes down to figuring out: What's the deal with this can in the woods? Mankind has some kind of preverse cultural addiction to negating natural processes with our own creations-- buildings and computers and bombs. But we've forgotten why we began building them in the first place. We're like the character Arnold Schwarzenegger played in the movie The Terminator: a really efficient machine whose motives got lost somewhere. Our purpose is to get back to the reasons behind our creating-- the middle ground where the medium and the message are one-- back to the human values, the responsibilites to our fellow beings, that first prompted us, passionately, to build these replacement mechanisms. Once we do that we'll have a chance to save the planet so other cats can grow up and dig the forest."

- Amy Chait