What Will it Take?

Like you, I’m pretty average. No offense. But I live an average life, with an average height, average hobbies and interests- maybe a little extra on the psychology and science parts of life, but even in those fields, pretty typical.

I’m not mentioning this to put myself down. No, I’m overall okay with who I am and what I aim to do with my life. I feel like we’re all generally aiming for a sense of content if we can find it. And like anyone, I’m just trying to live my life to the best of my ability. But there is something I’ve been struggling with for a while and perhaps you’ve felt the same. I’m sure you’ve noticed, for better or worse, that we live in a world of convenience and consumption. And like many, I’ve been taking advantage of our society’s lifestyle. It’s how so many of us have been raised. But over the years as I get older, I find myself asking: "What is the cost?"

I’m sure you have heard- almost constantly lately, about what’s been going on with the planet; another oil spill, plastic pollution in the ocean, electric vehicles vs fossil fueled cars and emissions, wildfires all over the place and other abnormal natural disasters, and so on. In my opinion, it’s pretty scary. And I think many might agree with that feeling.

What I didn’t expect was the controversy around these issues and their level of importance, or whether such issues were important in the first place. If the current environmental issues persist as they are, I wonder how many people realize that issues in other areas of our lives will be affected, if they aren’t already. Like a massive domino effect. But maybe to everyday people, these giant dominoes are moving very slowly. Maybe some only see one domino at a time. (It can be very hard to react to seemingly abstract or distant problems.)

I’m not sure about you, but I had to go out of my way to really understand these domino effects. Personally, I feel like my education growing up kind of failed me, so I had to go exploring on my own or through higher learning institutions to answer questions. What is happening on this planet? What are people doing? What do we do?

One thing that is consistent: it feels like we have to uproot parts of our society and change the way we live to fix the issues we’ve significantly, collectively and continuously, contributed to. That’s a lot.

And I often catch myself looking around at my environment in a busy suburban city and think, “what will it take for us to change?” How do we even begin to go about that, to process this information? What exactly do we change and how drastically? And in some cases, how do you ask people to be inconvenienced? The United States, a place that looks wealthy to the outside (and generally is when compared to some of the world), has severe inequity when it comes to basic necessities.

How do we ask people to change? To be potentially inconvenienced when they’re already inconvenienced? How do we get people to care about something that feels too big to tackle alone or about something some may not even think is necessary or their responsibility? This is where my mind has been living in the last 2 to 4 years. Or more, I’ve lost track. And for context, I’m a single female in her 30s with no kids, an okay income, able to keep my attention and time on such matters, and am somewhat able to afford an "eco-friendly" lifestyle. Even from where I stand, it’s not easy to change a lifestyle and the literal things we consume. Some things are almost unavoidable (e.g. medical supplies). So back to the question at hand: how do we tackle the questions of what to do? And convince others to care, enough to take some form of action? They already have so much on their plates. Well, while I was going down this rabbit hole, I came across various folks on social media that are doing all kinds of cool things as individual groups to tackle environmental issues. I got inspired and thought, "so many people are on the ground, doing amazing work, and speaking up all around the world." Suddenly, I didn’t feel like we’re just heading full-speed ahead towards a preventable (or at least manageable) doomsday without a fight. I felt inspired and even more fired up! I’ve heard people say they feel isolated and defeated, not just in the States. People in the environmental fields are feeling exhausted, too. Guilt tripping people into change can only get you so far, and honestly, no one wants to keep doing that, either. So maybe here’s what we tackle first. Tackle the feeling of isolation. Face the societal guilt and challenges in our lives as humans by being kinder and realistic with ourselves. Let’s build our community back as humans with humanity. I know it sounds cliché. But in my opinion, by building our power back as a people, that’s how we start restructuring our society. This is how we build resilience, with information and community.

Humans are social creatures (yes, even you introverts out there). Even if we need space from each other, we aren’t meant to be in true isolation. So if you’ve been feeling these fears, this dread when it comes to the state of our planetary home, and want to explore some ideas or get a little informed (at least generally, and pointed to more informed people); to learn together how to deal with these issues, and maybe get a little inspired, then join me on this journey. Because, unless you are a billionaire who’s figured out how to live in space, we are quite literally in this together.

Cheers!