Climate Anxiety
Can you feel it? It’s an uncomfortable lump in the body. An ache we know has been there for a while — but its not so bad that we have to do something about it. It’s a tightening of the chest for no reason; an impatience towards an unknown goal.
My favorite holiday to date was to the remote Yasava Islands in Fiji. Where the mountains and ocean hold you in its vast lap. With simple cabins and rooms that hug the landscape and people from island clans hosting us in these delightful eco-resorts.
All my life, I have moved continents, studied, worked, started freelancing and have been on a relentless hunt only to find peace in one of nature’s most untouched landscape. You can feel the power of the being that is this planet in these places, if your mind and senses can relax enough. The gentle and loving giant on whose waters I lay on my back and watched the clouds go by at dusk with forested mountains in the horizon.
What a dumb game we have created. We study and work to destroy the planet so we can earn enough money to go to the parts we have not yet destroyed. It dawned on me like a sick joke, like a brick on my chest. It is one thing to know cliched phrases: “climate emergency is at the door”, “the system is broken”, “1% controls 99% of resources”. It’s a whole other thing to see the game as you look at your own life and feel it in your body.
2016 was the first time when I felt like my sadness was not mine alone, but arising from a collective pool of sadness. While the emotion can become all encompassing there is a certain strength is knowing that this is shared grief — and through it we are connected to each other.
2022 was when I realized that our bodies are a microcosm of this planet. The breath its winds and the rivers its blood. We are all hurting in our bodies for what we are doing to this planet. If you are able to steady your mind for just a little bit, just enough so that you can focus on your body, the parts that are aching, you will find keys not just to your physical but your emotional and mental matters that seek your attention. The trauma lives in the body and hurts like hell. Before it turns into illness I hope you can find the time to sit with it. Listen, love and accept the pain until it dissolves into you. As it dissolves it sends electric waves of gratitude for freeing it.
As you heal yourself, know you are doing your part in healing the planet. Sure, recycle, compost, ride-bikes and all that too — but only out of the joy of simple living — not driven by climate anxiety.
