Emotional environmentalism - when the world is on fire, what can you do with a bucket?
An actual image of my social life (prior to the current situation)
Watch the news, hop on social media, even take a step outside; it’s feeling unsettled, eerie and strange out there.
It’s hard to know what to trust when the threat is invisible. To remember the ground beneath us, that we can trust that, when it seems like the air could be poisoned.
And it’s not just that.
Terror, rage and powerlessness are a heady smog to try and breathe through, to stay conscious in. It’s hard not to accidentally swallow more anxiety, pump out more pain, and add to the energetic tornado. Either that or shut off, shut down and collapse.
Why I quit journalism
One of the reasons I stopped working in news and became a life coach was that watching the world burn became too much for me. I couldn’t do it anymore.
Instead of helping put fires out, I simply found myself burning down too. I was ashamed at the time: how could I be a journalist who couldn’t bear the news? I felt like an impostor - like a chef with no appetite. And I felt guilty for wanting to run away too - how could I turn away? Was I neglecting my responsibility not only at work, but also as a human being? Wasn’t it important to tell people what was going on? To share the ‘very real fears’ and things going on in the world?
“I was a journalist who couldn’t stand the news, it was like being a chef to whom the mere sight of food made her nauseous.”
Yet every day felt like a new moral injury, punching on the unhealed bruises from the day before. I had be humble and realise I was going to need to take a break and do some recovery if I actually cared about anything, if I was going to be in a fit state to do it. It would be foolhardy to run a marathon for a charity helping people with broken legs and break both legs in the process.
I have a smaller, more metaphorical hose.
Now I love what I do - I feel like instead of simply shouting “FIRE!” until I’m hoarse and hoping desperately someone cares enough to put it out, I have the chance to be of service in some small way to help turn the temperature down.
And I think we can all do this, whether we are in healing work or not. We are not powerless, and there is something we can do that helps over and above the obvious - recycling initiatives, giving to worthy causes etc.
Emotions are energy too
I think of emotions in terms of energy - and just like with the environment - there are ways to use energy sustainably and in a way that improves both our lives and those who live close by. To be responsible with the way we use emotional energy and for the type of energy we choose to generate.
This little dog is a love generator
Yet just like in our lackadaisical attitudes to recycling, there are ways to pretend our impact doesn’t matter, to expel our excess energy destructively, blaming and raging at others, or to turn it in on ourselves, hating on our own existence and character until we deplete ourselves.
We can run our lives on toxic energy, until either we or those around us burn out.
Start where you are
I say this without judgement. We start where we are. If we have a lot of fear, or anger, it’s not wrong, it just is. We choose and learn how to respond to it, whether to foster it, untangle it, accept it, love it.
Feelings are not a problem, it’s how we respond to them
It’s difficult to start working with these energies, unblocking the love that lies beneath them. How does one recycle terrifying experiences? Or use compassion to convert pain into love?
Compassion is how we convert pain into love - the ultimate catalytic converter, it lets us go into painful places and survive whilst making the environment better.
Sometimes, like when we are tidying up, or cleaning out our handbag or drawers, it feels like it looks messier before it gets organised again. But we don’t have to get angry at the anger or be afraid of the fear. That’s just doubling down on the problem.
Hand it back to the universe
And actually sometimes the quickest way to move through it is to feel it, and for those parts that feel extra stuck and stubborn, gently offer the rest of it back to the universe and ask for it to recycle the rest.
A wise woman once told me to hand one’s unwanted emotions to a tree - to sit with my back to it and let the tree take it, to convert it and use it just as it did the carbon monoxide from my exhale. And I don’t know why it works, but it does.
I am unapologetically in love with trees
Why this is important
This is not just an analogy. The planet is currently hurting for many reasons; the impact of environmental changes, widespread logistical and infrastructural problems and political differences. Yet, dive underneath all of these to the roots of the problem and I believe that the mismanagement of our own personal fear, or lack of love, puts us and our home most at risk.
Without changing the way we operate and our own relationship to ourselves and our fear, all the environmental, political, logistical and infrastructural changes will simply be a stop gap - a plaster - and that’s even if they can change while we are still living in a mindset of scarcity, fear and refusing to open our hearts because it feels too vulnerable.
The mismanagement of our own personal fear, or lack of love, puts us and our home most at risk.
It’s not going to be easy turning this oil tanker around. Our society runs on fear, shame and anger: it’s the way most of us have been motivated since we were children. ‘Do this… or a bad thing will happen’.
We are taught to make money to avoid the pain of being poor, or the shame of being ‘less than’. Driven to succeed because we fear failure, or seek to be powerful because we fear feeling powerless, while deep down believing we are.
We are told to be ‘good’ to avoid being shamed or rejected. We enjoy resentment and anger because it feel fiery, powerful, and lets us do whatever we want, desires we unncessarily deny or shame ourselves out of most of the time.
A lot of this is unconscious - and we only seek help when it reaches crisis point or have a sudden wake up - when the messages we’ve been fed by advertising and the troubled confused beliefs and experiences of those before us no longer works, and we realise it isn’t working for anyone else really either. A temporary hit at most.
However now we have a collective reason to start looking at our own energy too. It’s one thing we could do to help the planet and nix our sense of powerlessness in the mix.
Channelling the fear and anger
There is one good thing that may come from our fear and anger right now - and that’s realising how toxic it is to our own continuing existence and making steps to channel what’s there and stop its continual habitual unhelpful production.
Fear and anger can force us to wake up - I think of it like being in first gear - good for getting the car started - but driving in first gear wrecks the engine. Right now, for the planet’s sake, we need to start looking at our own fears and working with our own emotional energy, if we are to survive.
In a climate emergency, even if the warming is stopped, and there are still enough resources for everyone, how can we live together when we are all still marinating in this fear and lack of love on a personal level? And if it isn’t stopped, and resources do start to become less abundant, then this excess of fear and rage, and inability to work with that energy, will simply hasten our own destruction.
Growing away from fear and towards love
How can we save nature? By learning from it
Fundamentally I feel that like just like trees, there comes a point where instead of simply growing away from darkness, we start to be more willing and able to grow towards light. Pain might provide the initial motivation but love will sustain our continued growth.
This is a personal journey as well as a collective one. Connecting and changing our relationship to the planet also requires changing our relationship to ourselves as part of this ecosystem.
At some point we have to choose not to grow away from darkness but towards the light
The problem with environmentalism is you actually have to believe and feel part of this world and be connected with it on some level.
You have to like the world, or at least part of it, or see good here. To love people you don’t know and trust people you don’t know, for no particular reason other than loving the world, thinking humanity is worthwhile and wanting to do the loving thing because it feels good.
In order to make the moves to save this planet, we also need to learn to love and trust, believing that things can be better, people can be better and trust for trust’s sake.
There is more than one way to live in a toxic environment, and to be a person that raids and depletes their surroundings rather than protecting and nourishing it. It begins with our emotional energy and our intentions.
To promote health and wellbeing of who and what’s around you rather than consuming and discarding people, products and situations for temporary satisfaction, before moving on.
It starts at a personal level: Recycling your painful experiences into power, processing your emotional rubbish responsibly rather than dumping it off somewhere else, or letting it ruin you, as you shove it down and choke on it, let it poison your own body, and clog up your heart.
It’s about making an effort to live from renewable source energy, from a place of expansion and altruism, rather than taking and spending from your own ego, woundedness or feeding off the energy of others until depletion.
It’s not easy. It doesn’t happen overnight. It is frustrating and messy. It’s easy to give up or think it’s impossible. Those are all stops along the way. I’ve had to clear out a lot of trauma and I haven’t always been particularly pleasant or emotionally responsible during that process, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But willingness is where it starts. We might not be able to make a rally and we might not be able to influence Brazilian environmental policy in the way we hope, right now, but we can, one decision at a time, put out more love in the world, and pour more love into ourselves. I happen to think love has a bigger legacy, leaves a bigger impact, than we really know.