It's crystal clear to me, the feeling filling and flowing out of my mundane marrow. the theme of reinvention is back - blasting with effervescence out of my mouth as I pound the stair stepping machine at the gym, glinting off the faint sharp smiles of bicyclists trying to outrun the gathering thunderstorm, I smell it from the sunburned trees on a planet with diminishing amounts of ozone, I see it in the bank of televisions where celebrities' boobs compete with dead children strewn in a nameless street, in a world where we STILL manufacture the lead additive that used to go in gasoline, I read it between the lines of economists setting national environmental policy, I hear it sliding down the ever-fresh powder at indoor ski resorts in desert countries, it lies behind the advice that you've got to see Las Vegas once before you die... The chance to reinvent is there in all the cognitive dissonance which is driving us crazy as a culture - every time we can't stomach something and see no one else working to change it, even though we're pretty sure they can't stomach it either.
is it so bad to be tired of fighting to preserve the world as we know it? is it so terrible to let it go? how much before we know it's enough? how many presidential elections do we need to see go past with a group of old white talking heads babbling about a smaller group of old white men who are constrained by other old white men behind the scenes? when do we get local - starting with our arteries and veins, our skin, our clothes, our loved ones, the houses we live in and the block we live on, our ideas about what will make us happy, our hopes and fears about companionship, our biological compulsions? when can we carry a global consciousness without sinking our lives into global struggles that are complexifying without end? when can we stop being co-opted out of radical action by putting energy into politicized debate between two meaningless, polarized options? when can we have the courage to see past the illusion of economic growth as salvation and see a significant downsizing of humanity's footprint as a basic starting point?
yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm some guy behind a computer screen who's belly-achin' about the world while he sits on his butt and types. But please listen, 'cause we've got to talk, gotta get some common ground in our public discussions, gotta get some science on the front pages mixed in with some talk about how we want the world to be in even as short a time as 50 years from now. I get nervous when I see bad science out there, I get nervous when I see an absence of long-term thinking in public policy, I get nervous when I feel the Us and Them mentality coming from us and them.
Where is all my angst coming from? My neighbor is a wonderfully sweet woman with an equally sweet five year old daughter. When I see Faeron, I want to be able to say that I did what I could today to make the world a more liveable place for her when she grows up. I really, really want that. I know we all do. But we're not doing that, nor do we really know how. There are so many people around the globe, living life based on such widely different sets of information (religious dogma, political dogma, fear of scarcity, gluttony of surplus, racist anger, etc.) that it's unimaginable to me to get us all on the same page. Could we even get close to a unified agenda to save ourselves? Could we get an agreed upon analysis of what we're doing in the ecosystem and what that might mean for our future? Could we admit to the darker, fearful part of ourselves and try to bring them out to the light of day?
I don't know, but I have hope. It's not hope grounded in a talk show host giving cars away to audience members for feel-good ratings. It's not pictures that kids drew with crayons showing how much they like endangered species. It's not about rebuilding New Orleans. It's not about Kyoto anything. It's about starting with small is beautiful. It's about waking up and remembering to be grateful to be alive and have all the things I have. It's about thinking about the consequences of my actions in the short and long term, and having the courage to follow my heart in choosing what to do. It's about the precautionary principle - going slow and taking it easy before doing things or creating new things with possibly huge ramifications. It's about the Hippocratic oath, and aiming to be kind. It's about turning off the 500 channels of vapid babble and turning to the person next to us instead. It's about discovering gentle and tough love inside ourselves. It's about leading thoughtful, informed lives where we take ownership for our actions. For me, it's about feeling like I'm in it with all of you - we can always do better when we help each other out. You're the one I've been waiting for...
