Normal is Over

I just watched the environmental documentary Normal Is Over, and am feeling raw and ashamed and pleading with myself to change. Wanting desperately to do something to make a difference, to turn the tide of planetary destruction we are bringing to the earth.

 

I want to help solve all of the problems – economic, social, environmental, they’re all connected – and at the same time feel so helpless because I feel there is nothing I could possibly do that would actually make a difference. I could stop eating meat, stop using plastic, give up my car and go live on a farm, but what difference would it make in the world? I’m not a changemaker, I’m not an influencer, I don’t have a platform or a presence on any kind of political scene. I could make those changes in my individual life, but I worry that I would do it in isolation – making it not only more difficult, but less effective.

 

How would I actually have to change – to change myself – in order to make a change in the larger picture? That’s a scary question. I want to hide behind not knowing the answer, but I’ve been doing that for years, and I’m ashamed of the consequences.

 

Who would I have to become in order to make a difference?

 

I would have to become passionate, to educate myself, to dive deeply into deeply uncomfortable questions, to form opinions and be willing to stand by my convictions and speak for them – loudly and unceasingly.

 

I would have to step into the larger picture, to be willing to admit to, expose and examine the ways in which I contribute to the problems that scare me, to acknowledge and own my past choices and decide to make new ones.

 

I would have to be vulnerable, to seek community more intentionally, to open my mind to other possibilities.

 

Vulnerable, visible, vocal. Be real, be willing, be strong.

 

Stop expecting “other people” to save this planet and its people, if I’m not willing to do it myself.

 

Teach my child by my choices and the way I live them out every day.

 

Become educated, connect with people, not just books, let myself be inspired all the way to action.

 

Create fearlessly and relentlessly, let it pour through me.

 

Decide what I believe, and live by it. If I’m not willing to save myself, how can I expect to help this planet I call home?

Oregon is Burning

The west coast is on fire right now. Amidst this destruction, I feel an aching urge to create – to write, to draw, to paint – and I feel stifled and disoriented and smothered at the same time. How to touch this heartache with words or colors on paper, when reality is so unreal? How to tune into the pain of the world without losing myself entirely within it? Or maybe that’s the point – to lose myself entirely, to surrender to the burning chaos and finally open my eyes to the heart of the flame.

 

Oh, my home, my beautiful Oregon, how can I hold you when you’re burning? How can I honor your losses when I have known so little of you, when places I’ve never seen exist for me now only in flames and ashes? I want to cherish their beauty but I have no memories to honor, and that is my loss to bear, to grieve and to honor. I ache for the memories I will never have, and for those I long to create.

And so I set out to create small things of beauty in whatever way I can, to bring some light and meaning to this nothingness that engulfs the land. Small things of beauty made up of words, of colors, of lines on paper, that in the end mean nothing but what they stir in the hearts of those who find solace in them. Words and colors on paper, braving the flames, willing to rise and fall as ashes when the burning ends.