In issue 341 of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, there is a quote from Thoreau: “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
I like that. A lot. The notion that we don't have to change the whole world, we simply need to identify the path that calls us, and then follow it thoughtfully.
I love Resurgence because it is focussed on growth and renewal, the hopeful, the helpful, but this particular issue was given over to talking about “navigating climate anxiety”. As ever, the articles were as positively slanted as they could be, looking to the good work being done, looking to what
we can do, looking to the hope, but still, it took me a long time to read this one because, to be brutally honest, I’m not climate anxious. I’m not in eco-fear.
Maybe I should be, but I’m not.
I know that I am doing some necessary things, and I know I am not doing enough. Worse, I figure I'm not "feeling" enough. I'm not angry or scared or anxious. I suspect this is one of the things that leads to my “self-esteem issues” – if that isn’t too grandiose a term. The thing is: I actually quite like who I am and the choices I make (mostly), but at the same time I feel “judged” by many of those around me. I should underline the word “feel”. No-one is actively putting me down – not within my hearing anyway – but I still feel that I don’t measure up on their ethical values scale.
I'm sure I read somewhere that if you're not scared, you're not paying attention.
The world is burning and what am I doing about it? Not enough.
How can I go on living my life like this? Actually, how can I not?
The truth is that a large part of me thinks that humanity’s time on this planet is limited, it always was, and maybe the fact that we seem to be insistent on shortening it is no bad thing. If we cannot learn – and seemingly that is the case – then maybe we are just another failed experiment, one the cosmos thought might work but didn’t. I really don’t want to be around when the end-days arrive, but it increasingly looks as though I might be. If so, I will bear witness to what we did and didn’t’ do. And just to be clear on my use of language here, ‘we’ does include ‘I’.
I know I am not doing enough.
For instance, shock-horror: I am a meat eater, as my species has evolved to be and not yet evolved not to be.
For instance, I have deeply withdrawn from the ‘current affairs’ media of the shit-storm that is planet earth in the 2020’s. I don’t watch or listen to or read “the news” – because none of it is new. It is all merely the latest cycle of man’s inhumanity to man, and to the rest of the planet. I know the essence of what is going on out there – I choose not to suffocate myself in the details.
For instance, I am still vain enough to dye my hair - unnecessary chemical onslaught.
There is another part of me though – the part that reads Resurgence and supports the Trust (and other initiatives locally and around the world) – that chooses to live in hope, that chooses to believe that probably none of us can ever do enough because the world is more complicated and inter-related than we have yet grasped and every good thing has the seed of some other disaster in
it: the law of unintended consequences.
On that basis I figure: forget about doing ‘enough’ and just do ‘something’. And notice what that something is, and do a bit more of that, or something a little tangentially related to it.
The eco-fear is well founded, but we cannot live in fear. That is a psychological fact of the way the human brain works…too much fear will simply, one way or another, kill us. We can only live, and live happy, satisfying, whole-hearted, full and meaningful lives, if we choose to live in hope and in action.
Action and hope is a self-sustaining loop – at least it is if we leaven it with a seasoning of faith, and a touch of grace (or gratitude if that word sits easier with you).
We are talking here of ‘active hope’. Hope without action is merely wishful thinking. True hope, true optimism, requires that we take action to make it so. The point – I will reiterate it – is that it doesn’t need to be grandiose. If you have the grand idea and the courage to implement it: go for it. Don’t let me hold you back. But most of us don’t, and it will take not only ‘most of us’ but ‘all of us’ to really change the world.
So: do the ordinary things. Reduce, re-use, recycle. Reduce is the big one. Buy less. Waste less. Become unfashionable. Reject any offer to ‘upgrade’ – at least until your current model has broken beyond repair.
Do the easy things and let them lead you into the less easy things.
It is easy for me to rely on public transport – because I never learned how to drive. But I could think more about the fuel I use at home…I like to keep my place warm, but do I need to? To be fair, I’m not actually convinced I use more energy that way: it is more efficient to keep a place warm, than to repeatedly warm it up from cold. But how about the way I cook? Hmmm...that could be radically changed.
A current writing project has got me thinking much more consciously about “stuff” – actual things – and how much of it we clutter up our lives with. An area I am actively (albeit slowly) working on.
There are other areas where I am less thoughtful about my choices. During the lockdown years, I got into the habit of shopping really locally – which is great on one level, but on another has resulted in an increase in plastic packaging making it through my door.
When I think about all of these things, I think about the crookedness of my path. I think about how far I stray from it, at times. But I also call into question how much of ‘this’ is ‘my’ path at all…and how much of it is someone else’s that they are demanding I walk with them.
When Thoreau talks about pursing a path, he is asking us to choose our own path, the one that we can walk with love and reverence, the one we are called to walk, the one whose walking is not difficult, because crooked as it is, it is also narrow: it shows us the way and calls us away from distraction.
All the things I “think I should be doing” are mere distractions. Useful contributions as they might be, they are still distractions, they pull me away from where I can be more helpful, more hopeful, more committed, more active. The more we can focus on our own path – however narrow – the more we will be able to walk it with reverence and love – and that might just be the key: increasing the amount of reverence and love in the world. Clearly the world needs it.
My path – for now – lies in the search for beauty and wisdom and the sharing of what I find, through the weaving of words. I believe that beauty and wisdom are entwined. I believe that humanity and the planet and all its life are entwined. I believe that if we share what we have learned or found along the way, it may touch someone and guide them on their own path.
I believe in the power of words. Someone said that our reality is limited by our language, by our ability to describe it, if only to ourselves. Using our language, wilding our words, enables our reality to be re-wilded, and maybe that of others to – the unknown others who simply stumble across something that, one day, we thought was worth saying.
This ‘I’ believes that we have the capacity and capability not only to limit our impact upon our planet, but to reverse it. This me believes that the tide may turn, that the youth and the ancients, will show us what needs to be done and, more crucially, persuade us to do it. If I live to see that shift, then I will bear witness to what we did and didn’t do. Because sometimes what we “don’t do” is just as important as what we do.
I am not doing enough – none of us are – but if we are doing something, then let’s keep doing that.
Let’s all find our own path, however narrow and crooked, and learn to walk it with love and reverence, because all of our paths are walked upon this planet, in this world, in the situation of our current lives. The activist movement can easily overwhelm us with the guilt of what we are not
doing, and I believe that it is a radical act to step away from that, to be true to who we are and do what our soul is calling us to do. To step from anger to wisdom, from destruction to creation, from fear to beauty.
Do whatever you are called to do: whether that is to retreat to the woods and meditate, or climb mountains and expound upon the effort and the beauty, or to raise a family, or to paint pictures, or capture them with a camera, or to string words one after another in the hope someone will read them, or to coach people to their dreams, or to drive a bus, or tend a garden, or keep chickens,
or sheep, or grow cabbages, or to clean floors, or nurse the sick, or walk the streets trying to bring comfort to those who need it, or to build homes, or throw pots, or rent out space, or make people laugh, or cook food, or make films, or plant trees, or clean the oceans, or a stretch of the lane or your beach, or…or…or…whatever it is: do that.
And do it with grace. Do it with love. Do it with respect and reverence for the land and the people and the costs involved. If we all did that much...it might turn out to be enough after all.
