How to be OK in times like these
Strap in, the Green Fix editor has some things to say.
If the world ended, would you know?
Sometimes I think mine already did. While I slept, pieces of my world slipped out of my grasp. As I refreshed my email inbox, the unfamiliar slid in around me.
I get my menus on QR codes now. We count the number of people in a café. Certainties became uncertain. Unthinkable things became the norm.
Four quarantines, three house moves, two funerals and I -
I am spinning out. Staring at my laptop screen. Staring at the date. Is it really December? Did all that really just… happen?
My friend asks if I have any New Years’ resolutions. The question doesn’t make sense to me. As if I can keep 2021 safely locked in the past come January. As if 2021, and 2020 and every year that came before won’t spill into the next year and all the ones after.
Year wrap-ups and resolutions do not fit this new normal of mine where everything is abnormal.
The other day: a pause over the phone. As me and my dad awkwardly, tentatively realise that we won’t be able to meet for Christmas Day after all.
And I made a cup of tea and thought but this doesn’t fit my plans. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
Well of course it isn’t. Because in my world, if I send enough emails and finish my to-do list, the ocean doesn’t catch fire. In my world, if I work hard enough, everything will be OK. But it doesn’t work like that.
It has been 12 months. It has been a lifetime.
It snowed in April. My mum died in spring. The ocean caught fire. There are no rules. In this new unknown world, every fresh week threatens to up-end my assumptions about what can and can’t happen.
But two can play at that game. There are no rules. Cut loose from tradition, I am set free.
So why not celebrate Christmas in February? Why not attempt the things you could never dream of doing? Why not seize every opportunity for joy and celebration whenever and wherever they arise?
The world’s all off-kilter and that’s alright. At some point between quarantines, funerals and IPCC reports, I said: OK. And I let go of the need for control. I chose to get drunk on the unknown. Let the chaos of the year sweep me along into a fiery and fierce new world.
It’s not all bad here, not all good either. Just a dizzying series of events tumbling in one after the other, while I rush around. Missing messages, scrolling Instagram on sleepless nights. Crashing on the sofas of friends and writing up introductions on how to fix eco-anxiety.
As if the climate crisis hasn’t been my taskmaster, my other half in a toxic work-life relationship. As if crisis hasn’t become my comfort zone.
And sometimes I was speaking at a European Parliament event in Strasbourg. Sometimes I was handing out soup as me and my family gathered in my gran’s home after her funeral. Sometimes I had a lanyard slapped on me and walked miles in rainy and windy Glasgow with 130,000 strangers.
But mostly I was here. In the grey zone. Walking alone from café to home to train to café in Brussels, and in Ghent, and in Winchester and in York and in Glasgow and god knows where else, thinking, Am I really still going? Am I really still here?
And I am. Despite everything, I’m still here. I’m still here and so are all the pieces of me. Not sure whether I’m resilient or just forgot to give up somewhere along the way.
I’m still here and so are you.
You are here, out there, somewhere. Over a thousand of you reading this and feeling the same uncertainty about how to navigate this new world. You are not the only one.
The present looks stranger than any story I’ve read. Everything is upside-down. Maybe it always was. The future is unchartered territory but in my mind I’ve visited a thousand times already and I know there is good waiting for us there.
There will be celebrations and beautiful things, and there will be tragedies and floods and wildfires. And everybody we know is already there.
I’m ready for that. Ready to have the rug swept from under me again. Ready for the good and the bad. This new world is relentless but so are we.
No fixed endings, no closure, no resolutions. Just a world that goes on and on and on.
***
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Useful: Why community action is crucial to achieve sustainable development.
So Now What Do I Do?
LEARN MORE
Listen to the Green Dreamer podcast for deep-dives into ecological regeneration and abundance. (I am also addicted to the newsletter.)
Try out Ecoflix, a new not-for-profit online film and TV platform.
TRY SOMETHING NEW
Not got plans for Christmas Day? Here’s 7 ways you can help others.
Your family are looking forward to you bringing up the climate crisis at the dinner table. Here’s how to do it without making everything awkward.
The European Youth Forum is recruiting for a paid campaigns and communications internship! Apply before 3rd January.
CHANGE THE SYSTEM
Apply the UN’s Innovation Readiness programme by the 31st December with your idea for achieving sustainable development.
Aged under 30? Apply to become a volunteer Liaison Officer for Youth and Environment Europe. Deadline 5th January.
Enter the Young Global Changers awards with your idea for business that’s good for the planet. Deadline 5th January.
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Thank you for being relentless, along with so many others. That's how the needle will be moved, despite the best efforts of the very worst people to keep it stuck in place for the most socopathic reasons...
And here are some tangible grounds for hope, via MIT: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/23/1042973/climate-change-action-progress-clean-energy/