The intense Summer sun on a Friday in Fall nudges me toward a reflective pause or two. My body hasn’t fully shed the familiar rhythm of dry, hot August days yet, but still, it senses an oddity, an anomaly. My mind registers this feeling as a half-truth. Unusual, maybe—but an anomaly?
Disconcerting September charts flash into consciousness as I step outside. Worse than charts, the image of 120 dead dolphins next to a 102-degree river in the Amazon. The Amazon, where, as I type, trees—more than 800 million in the past six years—are clearcut because steak tastes good, I guess. Is planetary health available for two-day shipping?
A map of the most popular Halloween candy by state pops up on Twitter, and I wonder how my hair will look with bleached tips if I follow through with this year’s costume idea. I wipe sweat from my brow, and a shriveled brown leaf, fallen from a shedding tree, crunches underfoot with less satisfaction than it used to.
The dazzling pavement intensifies the bitter taste of Into the Weeds, which has lingered for several days. It is a film that lays out the incontrovertible evidence that glyphosate—the Coke of herbicides, used indiscriminately on lawns, parks, farms, and forests alike—is a ruthless destroyer of the life that gives us life, nevermind a probable carcinogen for children and adults alike. It is a film that points out the long tentacles of suffering wielded by cancer, stubbornly wrapped around its patients and their families. It is a film that exposes Monsanto (now Bayer) as another malicious, profit-seeking Merchant of Doubt. It is a film that made sure I spread this call to action and urged me to remind myself that a key part of compassion involves holding others accountable for the suffering they create.
I shuffle through playlists searching for songs that stand out, still feeling the glow of my first DJ set in five years. Stanford grad students moved and grooved—united through the miracle of movement and sound—while my mother drove home from work, 2,976 miles away, hoping her car wouldn’t stall amid all-time record flooding. The sun sets two hours earlier tonight than it does in June, and I wish I didn’t struggle so much to sleep in the heat.
I light my favorite incense as the broken sprinkler across the street unleashes a steady deluge on the impenetrable concrete. I make my daily walk to the giant, majestic oak tree by Hanover St., admiring the way the light embraces its thick twisting branches, and a project at work is altered because the oriental fruit fly isn’t supposed to be here, but it is. Farm talk triggers a recent memory: Sierra and I joyously spin each other around amidst passionate music, cherished friends, delicious food, and the remnants of wildfire smoke.
Can these all exist at the same time? The good, the bad, the crises, the beauty? It all makes my head spin a bit. Not with as much anxiety as it used to—I thank mentors, teachers, and my practice for this—but more with a stained glass window of different types of wonder.
I recall A Brief for the Defense, which I have yet to print for my wall after months of empty intention but beautifully addresses my predicament:
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
I think about how today’s calls to action, the Project Drawdowns and Carbon Almanacs of the world, can be exceedingly important while we concurrently look beyond them—beyond the carbons and methanes—and acknowledge that we’ve trapped ourselves within a particular way of seeing. I realize how much more “yes, and” resonates with me after a long time of “yes, but.” I think about how we can speed things up by slowing down, how we can be still and know, individually and collectively. I dig into my years-old Kindle highlights and am reassured that recommending Climate: A New Story to others is still a great idea:
Does this mean we might as well give up on change? No. It means we need to ask, What are the circumstances that give birth to the choices that are harming the world? Engaging other people, we have to ask the question that defines compassion: What is it like to be you?
Fighting the enemy is futile when you inhabit a system that has the endless generation of enemies built into it. That is a recipe for endless war. If that is to change, then one of the addictions—more fundamental than the addiction to fossil fuels—that we are going to have to give up is the addiction to fighting. Then we can examine the ground conditions that produce an endless supply of enemies to fight.
The catastrophists are like the voice that tells the man in the maze, “Just stop.” They do not recognize that after this stopping a new compass becomes available, a song that can guide us out. The situation is hopeless, yes—but only from within the logic and worldview that entrap us. That worldview (which has generated the crisis to begin with) renders us impotent, because its solution set is entirely insufficient to the task at hand.
My friend Pat McCabe, a Diné (Navajo) woman and longtime student of the Lakota Way, puts it this way: “When you reach the end of your resource, then the magic happens.” When we exhaust what we know, then what we don’t know becomes possible.
Have we reached the end of our resource? Have I reached the end of mine? Is there a difference? The joy and the despair will dance together forever—can I embrace them both and harness their energy for what’s ahead? The early October heat surfaces these questions from unknown depths and asks for nothing but an open mind in return.
Outstanding! 👏👏👏
As helpless as it feels sometimes, we must keep plugging forward and doing our best to change the world. One bean at a time! 🫘