surviving existential exhaustion
calling out the elephant in my living room - and maybe yours?
I believe we humans are suffering from existential exhaustion.
We’re friggin tired. Beyond fried.
Fried by being gaslit by fascist politicians. Fried by horrible wars. Fried by working harder for less because of gross wealth inequality. Fried by living in the Handmaid's Tale in more and more U.S. states.
Yes fried by all that, even when our lives may be filled with beauty and meaning and writing and love.
But here’s what I think is truly exhausting us, the uber-exhausting factor if you will — the cognitive dissonance our lifestyles take. Knowing we are contributing to killing ourselves and most other species by simply living.
We don’t want to live in ways that harm anyone, let alone ourselves, but our systems trap us. We work to dismantle those systems, brave hard work I know you do on so many fronts, yet that dismantling is blocked, actively and maliciously, by evil people in power.
Knowing this, seeing this, feeling this, day after day, is profoundly exhausting.
I feel that exhaustion in myself so often and it makes me feel so alone. I want to scream at everybody, “The earth is dying and I just bought a new pair of shoes! What the hell are we doing?”
Here’s what I need to say to feel less alone: I have faith we can still stop the slide into profound suffering and death caused by more emissions flooding our atmosphere and I’m so so tired.
Sometimes I don’t want to admit how tired I am. I feel guilty, like I’m not a good environmental cheerleader. Like I’m letting the bad guys win. We have to keep up our hope! We can’t let the doom kill us. The bad guys can be defeated, I know they can.
And I want to say to you, to me, that being exhausted is a normal response, a healthy response to this insanity. There are times to lie down and weep. Not hide from our feelings, not numb out (although I do that too), but mourn.
The great Joanna Macy has long taught that.
It’s okay to admit we are exhausted.
I’ll be back next week with ways to fight and good climate news, because there is always good climate news. In the meantime, take a nap if you need one.
Much Love,
Jen
P.S. If racial justice and writing books are your passions, please join me and the NYT’s best-selling author Jen Harvey for a conversation about her upcoming book Anti-Racism as a Daily Practice. We’ll talk about how she overcame her fears about writing this book, how she hopes anti-racism work can evolve in very practical ways, and lots more. Jen is truly one of the most lovely people on the planet and she will give you great hope that change is possible. And the book is so good, you can’t put it down. Register here please. It's free.
I battle the exhaustion and anxiety by trying to remember that nothing is either/or and no outcome is ever certain (i.e. the final destruction of habitats amenable to human -- and other -- life). So yes, I buy shoes, but with awareness (not judgement). And I fly, but not if I can reasonably choose other transportation. And as far as possible I consume less, use less energy, reuse everything, but again, not with judgement. I try to remember that berating myself and others helps no one. Radical acceptance of detrimental human behavior is sooooo hard, but as long as I'm making what I view as positive steps in my corner, I have to be satisfied with that. I can affect, but never control, what others do. And who knows what humans in aggregate will do in the future? Things can change on a dime. And that's enough to give me hope most days.
Poor dear, all the complications and intertwined stupidities, whether personal or on large scales, seem to suck up all the energy. When I am there, I turn to art, the best I can get to (hence my return to Shakespeare lately), dive in and experience that humans can be great. And, as art often expresses strong emotions, I am not alone.
And I turn to nature, especially birds, listening. Bird listening has two gorgeous advantages for me: birds are always available (thanks dear pidgeons who are despised so often). And if you are listening to birds, you automatically look up. So an easy Goodbye to a hanging head. And it probably activates the 'calm and connect' mode of the vagus nerve... may all the birds on your way today lighten up your heart. 🤗