I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. It’s a bit of a debby-downer moment, you know? But hold that thought and bear with me because I don’t think it has to be that way?
I can’t work out if everything is actually far worse than it usually is, or if having the news instantly at my fingertips is making it appear that everything is far worse than it usually is.
(I suspect that it might be the former but I bury my head in the sand thinking it is the latter. We all have stories that we tell ourselves to keep us ticking, don’t we?)
We’re currently in the Anthropocene era. What’s the Anthropocene era, you ask? It’s like, the least popular Taylor Swift era, amirite? It’s us humans. It’s humans ravaging the world of resources, polluting the seas, harming each other and everything else, and billowing terrible things into the atmosphere etc etc ad infintium, ad nauseum.
So. What can one do?
I mean there’s the typical advice, condensed to:
We can do our best. We don’t need new clothes every season. We don’t need to have as much as social media tells us. Use what you have, buy if you need, not if you want. Stand up for what you believe in. Use your voice.
But once we’ve done that … what else? The world still feels like it’s constantly teetering on the brink of inevitable disaster; be it political, environmental, societal etc. Our actions feel nothing more than a single droplet when a vast ocean is needed.
Well then, let’s turn to my boi Voltaire:
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
We must cultivate our garden. Do what you can, but if there is nothing else, concentrate on your own little garden. Your own circle. Your own community.
Do what you can in your neck of the woods. I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept of – if you can’t do it perfectly, at least do it badly. If you can’t recycle everything – recycle some things. If you cannot donate lots, donate a little. If you can’t pick up a load of litter, pick up one piece. Some action is better than no action at all.
Also – try to stay off social media a little more, plug into the tangible world around you. You’ll feel far more calm, far more able, far more capable.
Cultivate our own gardens, whatever that looks like. Even if our own garden is a little plant pot.
(This is really just a post to help myself; to stave off the feeling of dread and the paralysis of fear.)
of words & books 