Contemplations on being alive

Here’s an expanded version of an introduction I wrote for the excellent The Green Fix climate action newsletter earlier this month…

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I call myself a climate inactivist. I don’t – can’t – go on marches or glue myself to the road to disrupt the status quo. I wish I could (but maybe this child of the 80s is too old for that sort of thing anyway).

I can’t because for the past few years I’ve had to drop out of society to sort out my physical health. The struggle to treat a complex problem has left me housebound for several months. Yet living in the middle of the city of Barcelona, my surroundings couldn’t be more urban.

So how can I make a positive difference from here? How do I bathe myself in Nature when I’m stuck next to a river of traffic and surrounded by canyons of concrete?  

Well, I support those who are pushing for change – we know what we need to do – but it turns out my role is to focus on who we need to be (I am perhaps more a feelings and ideas person than a do-er anyway). And I’ve had a seismic shift in my own mindset the past few years so I’m trying to pass that on. Let me try to explain…

It started with a realisation that I was really doing very little to respond to the climate emergency aside from individual lifestyle choices. So I made another choice – I was going to radicalise myself (in a comfortable middle-aged way, you understand).

I was already reading Robin Wall Kimmerer and being swept away by her gentle and poetic understanding of the living world. Then I found the online ‘gamechanger’ course that set me on the path to an expansive world of new thinking.

I learned more about social injustice, inequality and racism.

I delved into the root causes of why we’ve made such a mess of our beautiful planet, which cover capitalism, colonialism, Cartesian duality, human hubris…

I explored deep time and evolution, learnt about biomimicry and was introduced to the idea of humanity as the planet’s toddler species – we’re young, selfish and destructive.

And we’re not even the only intelligent beings on Earth. I’ve had my eyes opened to the more-than-human world, the other Earthlings who also solve problems, adapt to their circumstances and have evolved various ways of being we can’t even hope to match.

All this helped me appreciate existence in a different way, seeing beyond human society’s daily concerns. A revelatory awakening! What my culture has always taught me – that our man-made world is fundamentally separate from and superior to the natural world – is wrong! This intensely rich web of Life on Earth includes me too. Equally. If this was the dominant view, we’d never exploit or trash the planet like we do.

And Life is all around us if only we notice it, even in the city.

I’m lucky to live on the seventh floor, above the trees that line the main road below, with a big window. I notice the clouds passing, the playful wind and how the light changes throughout the day and year. I notice the local birds and what they’re up to – I watch the magpies coming and going to their nest and wonder how the brood are getting on. The trees have recently burst into new leaf – my river of trees will soon be green and lush. It won’t be long until the swifts arrive to nest (and make the space between the tops of the buildings their playground – their zooming and screeching is an annual joy).

Out back where we have a small open area, I notice spider threads between the washing line cords waving in the tiny air current. What feat of acrobatics has it performed to get from one cord to another? What is life like for the insects that scoot across my walls? What have the ants found in their busy explorations? I delight in my weekly delivery of local fruit and vegetables, sometimes with added teeny snail (and always with the most delicious apples).

I am Nature too. Because I was not assembled in a factory. I was born, I grew. I’m a hive of biological processes and a wonder of evolutionary design. My blood vessels and nerves branch like trees. My body is energy efficient, creates and repairs materials, maintains a stable temperature and uses resources carefully. What a marvel.

I’m basically a planetary ecosystem to the trillions of microbes who call me home (and without whom I would not function). I hope to be food for them when I die and they can turn me into soil so I can feed back into the cycle of life.

All of this, I find so – literally – awesome. I am a tiny cell in a larger consciousness of ever-increasing symbiotic complexity. It takes my breath away!

So I may barely leave my room, but my mind has travelled far and wide. All that said, the day I can again wander among trees or breathe in some fresh sea air will be a fine day indeed!