Wrestling with paradox

Sunrise at Glendara

To be alive in 2019 on this planet of ours - an exciting time, and a terrifying time. I often think I am glad to be alive now and not in the turn of the 20th century when all around were signs and clarion calls for progress, progress, progress!! Which most often meant industry, industry, industry. To cling to 'old ways' would equate being left behind. Forgotten as the march was led toward efficiency, machinery, assembly lines, manufacturing, and profit. I like to think that now, instead of being left behind when we question the 'new ways' we instead are joined by others tired of a way that did not lead to what was promised, and backed by science which says that that way led to destruction and harm of people and planet.

The struggle now though is we are in the last gasp and that gasp is holding out for a while trying to still paint a picture that all is fine. We DO have the science and knowledge and evidence that infinite growth on a finite planet is just not possible. BUT all around us, at least those of us in developed nations buffered a bit from the firsthand evidence (and intentionally buffered as mainstream news sources and certain politicians seek to eliminate the words climate change from any conversation or coverage), almost all we see is business as usual. So we wrestle, knowing one truth and seeing another. And wrestling with how to live in two worlds at once.

It was mid-December. I had pictures of my children's Christmas gifts list on my phone (it was 2018 after all)  and I drew a deep breath and walked heavily into a store that I had loyally boycotted for years. A store that epitomized all that I oppose in so, so many ways. From its large scale takeover of small communities and businesses across America, to its treatment of workers, to its disregard for the earth as it sprawls more and more, seizing wet lands and farm lands as it profits from selling items at a low cost and putting that burden of cost and manufacturing and petrochemical waste on developing countries and poor communities. I did NOT want to be there.

Admittedly I am not naive to the fact that this particular business is not alone in its depth and breadth of expansive profit before people and planet. Such mega-businesses and multi-national corporations are now less than a stone's throw (or finger tap on a screen) away. So this particular visit was not exactly the first consumer based violation of my values. But it was an on the ground, face to face, humbling experience.

You see, it is not that I disparage people who make these choices and shop at stores like this exclusively. That would be misdirected and just plain disingenuous. Not at all. I understand it. Never before have we had more of a disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest of the world, and specifically in this country. People are squeezed, as author Alissa Quart writes in her book of the same name. Life is 30% more expensive than it was 20 years ago. The cost of a public university has doubled since 1996. Housing costs, childcare costs, healthcare costs, student debt - these things become chains holding people down - from civil engagement but also from making choices they may like to make, such as supporting small businesses, local crafters and online sites of homemade items like etsy for something as simple as a Christmas gift for a child.

So it is not that I felt any sense of embarrassment that I had to shop at this mega corporation. No, it was a combination of resentment, anger and perhaps a bit of shame mixed in. I know better. I should do better. I should use our dollars locally or on vendors that have a face and that truly invest in the local community and the local bio-region. I also want to be able to afford those options. But like so many others, I am squeezed. And Christmas does not wait. The smiling, eager faces of 5 little people anticipating Christmas morning with so much excitement does not wait. I had to step out of my car and walk those aisles under bright fluorescent lights and overstimulated by so, so, so much stuff. A setting that makes it seem all is well, just buy these things you may or may not need, and don't ask questions of where these items came from, who made them, how much they were paid, how many toxins were emitted in the production of these items. Nope, don't ask those questions. Just shop.

The cold irony of this particular visit was that on the way there, one of the few times I have had alone in the car without little ones listening in, I put on a podcast of Democracy Now as they broadcast from Katowice, Poland at the U.N. Climate Summit. I listened to Amy Goodman interview a woman from the Philippines, Joanna Sustento, who detailed her horrific experience of  surviving Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 as she had to watch her family around her drown in a storm surge from the Typhoon. One by one, she tried to help them and even held onto her mother after her mother stopped showing signs of life and Joanna finally knew that she too would go down if she held on, and that they would want for her to survive.  So she let go. She had to let go of her own mother. And after much time she was able to climb out of the water onto the steel frames of a water tank and climb to safety. More than 10,000 people died in that storm. She has become a dedicated climate activist since that day. After so many years of packing to evacuate for yet another Typhoon she asked herself, is this what we have come to? Is this the 'new normal'? She now uses her voice to fight against what are called the carbon majors, the 47 coal, oil and gas corporations that have contributed to climate change over the course of the last century.

And then there is me. In the U.S. Driving a fossil fuel powered car to a big box store that could only exist because of massive use of fossil fuels and buying items that were produced with fossil fuels and packaged in plastic that is derived from fossil fuels. Sometimes the paradox of living at this time is just too much. Too much to bear.

I got home that night and wept. I wept for Joanna's family. I wept for the families of the 10,000 lost in Typhoon Haiyan. I wept for the hundreds of thousands of families devastated by climate fueled natural disasters all over the world. I wept for my participation in this destruction. I wept for my children and the future they will be handed. I want to give them a bright Christmas and keep the light of hope alive in their hearts in the here and now, but even more, I want to give them a bright future, and the courage and strength and hope to fight for that.

So I will wrestle with the paradox of living in this time. We are in it. We can see what we are doing. We might even be able to see another way. But we are not there yet. We walk with both realities and as hard as that is, we can't afford to not do that. Like Joanna, we don't have the option to give up. To just wait out the next storm. To turn our heads. It will take creativity and it will take hope. Hope in the MIDST of the struggle. Humans are capable of incredible, creative, collaborative and beautiful things. I have to believe that none of us, not one of us, wants to see another person drown in a storm surge that was a direct result of changes to our climate from the effects of human activity. We can do better. We can live on this planet in a way that offers respect and dignity to all of the life on it. We just have to figure out how. It starts with asking that question - together.

“The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it, as it does by having it answered. You just have to keep asking. And before you know it, you will find yourself actually shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t even have seen before.”

-David Whyte, poet