If I’m being honest with myself, it sometimes seems like more than I can take: The darkness. The cold. The never ending challenges. It is a deep winter in my soul when I reckon with what we have not yet saved. Hundreds of species are nearly gone or gone forever. More are disappearing every day because of human activities and pressures on this blue planet. With everything connected to everything else in our web of life, we put ourselves and our children at greater risk with every link we destroy in natural food chains and systems. All while global warming is unchecked and puts those systems in even greater jeopardy.
Most world leaders who have the power to create a better future focus their priorities elsewhere—as if this train steaming down the tracks will somehow veer off and leave us and our planet’s life-supporting systems unscathed. Some start war. Others say “yes” to significant takings of resources without regard to residual effects after money is made. Many spend their energies opposite of the global cooperation essential to saving what’s left of our children’s future quality of life. All while we devour more of our planet’s resources….
It would be different if I didn’t feel kinship with nature. If I hadn’t studied it all my life. If I hadn’t dedicated my life to teaching others about it in hopes of awakening their own kind of kinship. Perhaps I could find daily joy, maybe some kind of inner peace if I believed humans would evolve to pull out all the stops in the nick of time and save the day.
But a new species of planet heroes is not a global reality and I can’t save it alone.
In trying to come to terms with my overwhelm, I sought out friends to talk with—leaders in their respective fields as conservationists, educators, and scientists. We talked about the state of affairs on our planet, about eco-anxiety. They shared how they were also searching for a way forward out of darkness and into light. They needed a way to reenergize themselves for this next leg of their journey. They were seeking a next inspired purpose so they could demonstrate for others—especially our next generation of leaders—how to rise from gray times, too.
They helped me see I wasn’t alone. Their wisdom along with the nuthatches and chickadees singing spring songs on recent icy mornings have helped me begin my rise from gray to chart the next leg of my own journey.
They helped me see my mission with fresh vigor.
That’s when I realized that this is a hero’s journey of a different kind: The kind where individuals become equipped with knowledge and skills to become change-makers. They fire up their commitment to other people and fellow species, then gear up for action and never give up. This journey is the kind where people join together because there is power in numbers and because we need each other. The kind where we act with more consciousness about everything we use, eat, and buy. This journey has a path through the voting booth because every election is important and every voice counts.
This is a journey where we must never accept what the planet’s greediest, cruelest, and most heartless people want for us. We must be the heroes who will not stand by; we will get involved. We will not accept as our destiny what another villain with scissors wants for us as he cuts another string in our web of life to make his fast buck. We will fight the fight to expose what needs exposing like the lies spewed into the air by lobbies of liars who support industries that blacken our skies, poison our waters, and turn up the heat on our planet. We will innovate where we must innovate and strive to save what needs saving. We will stand up for what and who needs a voice. We will use justice and environment in the same sentence. We will strive every day to be part of a solution rather than sit in our dark corner and whine about what’s been lost which brings me back to where I began with this article….
I went for a hike this week to a lovely, wild park. Wisconsin snow showed off the shape of the landscape. That’s when I saw my slump in new light. Wisconsin Winter highlights the lay of the land, the structure of trees and shrubs, and the textures of branches. There are fewer leaves to hide behind or camouflage the season.
Winter is a season of stark realities.
And my stark reality is that I cannot stay in a dark corner any longer for I cannot give up. I will never give up. This journey requires everything I can give to rising above the gray, stepping out into the light, continuing to reduce my ecological footprint, and standing up for what I believe in. Hero or not, this is my moral obligation. It’s okay to feel dark every now and then so long as we find our way out of that hole. (And friends do help!)
Every day, the sun climbs a little higher in our Wisconsin sky. The light becomes more direct on my face. I feel changes happening within myself as they unfold before my eyes. It is a spring tonic for my soul to feel my way back to center with a spirit the color of anything but gray.
Patty Dreier
Author, Empowered: One Planet at a Time