Living With the Grief of Climate Change (part 1)

Blog 5    09 10 19

Sometimes when my filters are down and I hear about another catastrophic event such as the intentional burning of vast Amazonian Forest sectors for cattle grazing and agriculture, I feel my whole inside crash. When I’m reminded of our human contribution to accelerating global warming, I find no safe place to hide at that moment.

These are troubled times we live in. Yet, every day, I wake up to the sounds of crows. The sun shines brightly through the autumn leaves in my backyard. I still feel a sense of daily peace where I live. I manage to find ways to ignore, or perhaps to live happily despite it all. As we all do when we’re not directly touched by calamities.

Yet, I know I’m grieving deeply.

I acknowledge how difficult it is to change our beliefs, habits and attitudes toward the way we engage with our environment. Discounting people who are different from us, believing we have ownership over the land, trees, ocean and animals. However, we live our lives, and most of us can’t escape these ancestral heritages. We believe we have rights over everything else.

I grieve that I’m a part of this devastating human story.

Finding solace in befriending death is no suicidal thought. Our death denial is part of our domination culture problem. Human behavioural explanations won’t lead us to solve our way out of our predicament. We’ve become fixated on finding efficient solutions to fight global warming effects threatening the survival of our human species. But we can’t escape death and we’ve known it all along, unconsciously or consciously. I believe, along with many others, that our fear of death drives many or most of our destructive actions.

There comes a time when facing the reality of death becomes solace. The scale of grief we’re now facing is of an inhumane magnitude.

It’s a tall order of the day for any of us to face our grief.

Grief is acknowledging and seeing reality.

Grief is our capacity for compassion.

Grief is not abandoning ship.

It’s being honest with what’s taking place and being a courageous and active witness.

When I’m at the bedside of a dying person, I don’t give up on her because she’s dying. I help with relief, comfort and staying present. I’m actively present.

I’m still in love with life as I’m preparing for my eventual death.

I live with passion and purpose. I keep making the best choices available to me, while considering what would be of most benefit to all.

More than ever, facing our mortality is the right thing to do. It may not change the course of our predicament. But it’s still the right thing to do.

Let’s relax and talk openly about death, dying and our mortality together. Let’s do it for our benefit and for the benefit of all.