A couple of weeks ago the ranch across the road from mine caught fire. Though the flames were quickly contained by firefighters whose station is a half-mile from my place, still I worried, remembering the devastating Bastrop fires. How long, I wondered, before fire comes for me?
I asked a firefighter if he knew what caused it. He speculated a construction truck dragging chains threw off sparks. Not just any truck. One of Elon’s trucks.
For it is weirdly true that the Deranged Mister Musk has landed not only in my zip code but on my very street. Yes, that lunatic is building his sick Neuralink operation a stone’s throw from my property. And—hardly surprisingly— he clearly doesn’t care if the rest of us burn to the ground in the process.
Which means my real life is a literal microcosm of the world at large, everything on fire whilst the billionaires continue to add accelerants and fiddle on, a bunch of delusional Neros fancying themselves heroes.
It’s been months now since the heat dome sealed down upon us like a perfectly burped Tupperware lid at a home demo party in the 70s. The planet appears to be experiencing Stage 12 cancer and while I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t give up hope, I’ve been feeling pretty hopeless at the prognosis. I imagine myself ten, twenty, thirty years from now—in my family women live forever—some shrunken-apple-headed kitchen witch, sucked dry by the heat, huddled in front of a struggling window unit as the thermostat outside reads 130 degrees.
I am in no way prepared for this. I am feeling extreme paralysis at the prospect. I look at the juxtaposition of articles about Maui in Ruins printed next to articles about how to get great travel deals on fuel-guzzling airplanes and cruise ships and I can’t help but think, “Are we really this collectively stupid?”
I am puzzled watching my fellow humans seem to carry on like no big deal. While I can still recall many moments of awestruck joy across the endless trips I’ve taken, I am also saddled with grief and guilt at how cavalierly I used to hop on airplanes, sometimes ten times in a year, hurtling hither and yon around the globe.
I had a hand in all of this. Still do. I feel so terrible about this. Pursuing or experiencing joy of any sort feels about as right as laughing in the face of a howling baby.
And yet, in my discomfort, something else occurs to me. Sitting in my house crippled with anxiety waiting for Elon Musk’s trucks to torch my ranch is not helping.
So how to reconcile these things? I am trying so hard now to figure that out.
I recently read an interview with the French monk often referred to as the happiest man in the world. For him happiness is less about seeking pleasure and more about living in acceptance, neutrality and equanimity. I’m more than a little familiar with these concepts, having latched onto Buddhist philosophy nearly 25 years ago when I began a meditation practice that was uneven for the first dozen years and is now a nonnegotiable daily routine for me.
I’m even more familiar with the fact that very often there’s a wide gulf between knowledge and application. Sure I love the idea of remaining equanimous to alleviate suffering—my own and others’. And being mindful seems like it shouldn’t be that hard. But then I catch myself, not infrequently, on the delivery end of a protracted one-finger salute anytime someone cuts me off in traffic, which is basically anytime I am out driving. Also, the act of driving itself feels very unmindful, given the impact driving has on the environment.
After reading the monk interview, I assigned myself two tasks to try to reshape my attitude. Because the thought of mucking around in this current malaise for the rest of my life does not feel like a good use of whatever time I have left. And so, for the next thirty days I will attempt to live immersively in these activities to see if that helps.
The first, the easier, is to consciously practice what Buddhists call Beginner’s Mind. Greet everything as if you are a child experiencing something for the first time. That is precisely what I always loved best about traveling, how everything was new to me: the people, the food, the architecture, the culture, the language, all of it. I know I can easily conjure childlike wonder at the ranch watching the baby goats run, hosing down the pigs, listening to the birds.
I can even get it in my bathroom.
To wit: Every time I sit on the toilet—at my age this is with great frequency day and night—I look at the plant on the floor at my feet. It is a coleus plant, also known as St. Joseph’s Coat—growing up catholic I was never taught the Latin names for plants but rather the religious names for them—that serves the dual purpose of absorbing water that leaks from the shower I keep forgetting to re-grout and mesmerizing me.
I stare at the leaves while I am doing my business and I will myself to truly, deeply take in the beauty of them, the impossible wonder of plants. There is this glorious, dynamic, ever-changing explosion of color right there in front of me, at least as astonishing as any great wonder, natural or human made, as I have ever seen in all the faraway places I’ve been. And it’s right there in front of me.
The second challenge I have set for myself? I already know I will never, ever come anywhere close to fully accomplishing it, but I’m going to try anyway. Let’s call it Radical Kindness. I am going to attempt for one entire month to not lose my shit. With anyone.
Those of you who know me know that I am an incredibly kind person. To a fault. That I have, an embarrassing number of times, hurt myself deeply in my efforts to help others. But you also know I will not hesitate to cut a motherfucker who manages to cross my incredibly high threshold for pain and hurt me.
Now, I will attempt to laser focus on the Softer Side of Spike. I will smile at more babies, compliment more strangers and even strive to be patient with insufferable idiots. (Side rule: If I am in a situation in which I absolutely cannot muster kindness, I am going to walk away.) I will (probably only temporarily) mute grudges and refer as needed to the Zen proverb tattooed on my right forearm: Let Go Or Be Dragged.
The goal is acceptance. Not of things I will never be okay with—like a certain political party. But acceptance that these things—the hellfire of climate change, the insanity of growing fascism, etc—do exist. That I must coexist with them, like it or not. I want to embody a meme about acceptance I once saw. The gist of it is, you can look out the window, observe rain, and proclaim, “It can’t be raining!” Or you can note that it is raining, which is not what you hoped for, but, you know, there it is, so figure out how to operate within the reality of this moment.
I got a hard lesson in acceptance this summer. I’d been looking out the window for many weeks, unwilling to fully acknowledge what my eyes were seeing. Even the fire at the ranch across the way could not fully get through to me. Fascinating how long we can live in denial.
But then I saw things as they truly are and have been for months. The fields are all dead, dry dirt by day kicking up into dust when dusk’s hot wind blows in. There is no grass. There is no rain. The cost of hay is through the barn roof. I cannot sustain things the way they are. And, too, if the fire ever does reach me, I do not have the skills or equipment to evacuate large livestock.
Acceptance fell upon me. I made the call I did not want to make. Yesterday, not for the first time, my friend Brandon the Cowboy came by and took some more of the animals to his ranch, where he is better equipped to care for them. Brandon knows these farewells crush me, even as I know the animals will be at least as happy with him as they were with me. To cheer me up he pulled out his phone and showed me a photo of a steer the size of a large dog.“This is Peppy,” he said. “He’s a mini and that’s as big as he’s going to get. I can bring him to you.”
I arrived home from work last night to a greatly thinned herd. I wondered how evening rounds would feel. They felt okay. I understood I had let go of a situation that was dragging me down. I found a wonderful solution. This was all good. And then I found, in a field, a wee little steer I took in with Beginner’s Mind. I could tell, when he saw me, he was doing the same.
NOTES:
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My next six-week writing memoir for women starts in September. Tuesdays 11 am - 1 pm at the ranch. $150. Email me to sign up.
Also beginning in September I’ll be offering a free bimonthly writing workshop at the Hampton Branch Library in Oak Hill. Everyone is welcome. This is formatted differently than ranch workshops. Still a lot of fun and a great way to jumpstart a writing practice. I’ll share a sign up link once I have one.
Seriously y’all—how are you dealing mentally with climate change? I hope you’ll comment below.
Thanks for reading.
This is a long response but I couldn't resist the prompt; I think about this subject a lot, since I have small children and I specifically reject the idea that humans should give up on the future of the planet, self-destruct as a species, etc.
I have a friend who continuously posts depressing climate articles on social media, apocalyptic reports about record-breaking temperatures and all the devastation being wrought all over the world; he says he's trying to raise awareness, and is annoyed that almost none of his friends comment or seem to engage much with his posts. The problem is that feeling scared and helpless creates stagnation; it doesn't motivate us to solve anything, it just makes us want to crawl into a hole and hide. Climate change is real and terrifying and largely outside any one person's control, but we have to figure out a way to stay positive and energized in the face of it, just like with everything else (I say this after many years of therapy to work through my inability to handle uncertainty).
Here's what I lean on:
1. That Mr. Rogers quote advising kids to "look for the helpers," and then adding the adult step of elevating those helpers. There are some amazing individuals, organizations, businesses, nonprofits, writers, scientists, and others who are working every day to tackle different facets of the climate change problem, no matter how hopeless it seems. As much as possible, we should support their work and spread the word so that others support them as well. One example: I saw a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef that showed how much damage climate change is causing, but then highlighted awesome local efforts to combat this, like scientists breeding coral that reproduces more often and withstands hotter ocean water, and eco-tourist retreats where visitors help monitor reef conditions. Humans manage to be both the most destructive force upon the delicate natural balance of the world and also the most capable of figuring out ingenious solutions to preserve it.
2. Related to #1, focusing on one's sphere of influence -- the things closest to us are easiest for us to affect, whereas things happening across the world are almost totally beyond our control. When we spend too much time reading about and worrying about things we have no control over (thanks, NPR), it saps the energy we need to actually take action on a local level and improve things in our own community, which is much more doable. A recent example in Austin is the successful halt to the Zilker Park Vision Plan; there was so much local pushback against more paving and overbuilding on the parkland (I signed a petition and spread the word, as did many others) that the plan was scrapped and the city council knows they have to come up with something less destructive. I try to focus on local news and issues that I can actually do something about, since I'm highly empathetic and trying to care about all the terrible things happening everywhere all the time will actually make me less effective at creating change, not more. I suspect this is true for most people.
3. Humans are highly adaptive, and so is life in general. If we don't manage to reverse the tide of climate change, the fundamental weather patterns of the Earth will change over time and humans will change with it. We will probably move away from the equator and the coasts to avoid extreme weather and flooding. All the carbon that we're releasing used to be in the atmosphere at various times anyway; I have friends who do geological research in Alaska and say that the polar areas used to be covered in rainforests, millions of years ago. It's inconceivable to us that jungles could thrive in areas with so little sunlight for half the year, but life is incredible and figures out how to work with what it has. Humans are consciously even more adaptive and can come up with creative solutions to live in all manner of environments on very short notice compared to evolutionary timeframes. Someday in your shrunken-apple-headed kitchen witch days, which I hope to survive to as well, you won't be huddled in front of a window unit; you'll either have moved somewhere less hostile to human life or you'll be living in some giant yet-to-be-invented cooling metropolis dome that converts heat to electricity, condenses humidity into rain, and filters in enough sunlight to recharge people's Vitamin D without frying their skin. Or something like that, but hopefully we stick around long enough to find out.
4. Moderation to maintain sanity. We can reduce or avoid plastic where it's possible, and not beat ourselves up when it's not. We can fly occasionally when it's the most sensible option, but look at replacing a percentage of our trips with ground travel or train rides. Extremism is usually not sustainable (except for necessary health reasons like sobriety or celiac disease), and it also limits the audience we can influence. But you can set a relatable example through moderation that inspires others to be more moderate as well, because cutting back is always less alienating than swearing off something forever. If you could influence ten people to fly 20% less, you'd make a bigger impact than if you yourself flew 100% less. This article has some helpful info too: https://www.businessinsider.com/sustainable-air-travel-plane-airline-carbon-offset-aviation-emissions-2023-3
I love your writing and your heart -- thanks for listening and for being so conscientious. You definitely have influence and the power to create ripple effects.
I also have the guilt struggle but try to remind myself to only get worked up about blaming situations that have actionable solutions that I could participate in. Otherwise, I look at the future mass extinction with some degree of detachment- reminding myself that Earth has done the massive change thing before- but it was asteroids that caused it. For whatever reason, we are the asteroid- in a way that I don’t blame a lion for being a carnivore, we don’t see the big picture where our destruction is part of future creation. I have to amuse myself with wondering what magnificent creatures will evolve after adapting to this mess or maybe scientists will rescue us with amazing alternatives to keep the ship from careening into the rocks full force. Until the end I will try to step lightly and water kindness.