Musing on the Eve of Earth-day
This week my email has been bombarded with messages like this:
“Happy Earth Day! Do something good for the planet; buy my product at a discount, free shipping.”
I will say many of these are great companies. Under normal circumstances, I am happy that they exist and would rather purchase from them than walk into a Target any day.
However, we should not believe that we are doing anything good for the planet by consuming.
“But I need those organic cotton undies.” Yeah, me too, that's not the point.
Along with the emails urging greater levels of consumption. I am also getting emails about “three little things YOU can do to save the planet.” or “top ten simple ways to reduce your carbon footprint.” Again, I am grateful for the effort and thrilled that awareness has become mainstream. However, I crave the email that says something like:
Do something good for the Planet. Stop objectifying and abstracting the “planet” unto your own absolution. Consider a place that is familiar to you, a place that you love. Go there and try to do good for that place, coming to know it more deeply. Then, draw a place that is desecrated beyond imagination into your mind, and do good for that place. Even if it is only imagining better, craving better, or mourning what has happened, while you are doing that, know that all these places are connected to one another and to many other places that people love and people have desecrated.
Be sad. Notice everything that is not as it should be. Mourn the giant pile of trees, roots in the air, the remains of a hundred-year-old tree row wrenched up to make it easier to plant 500 acres of the same crop.
Stop consuming. Of all days, Earth Day should be a day of official mourning. A day to buy nothing, wear mended clothes, skip a meal or three, or give up chocolate. Turn off your phone. Then, make all of these things a regular habit.
Don’t be fooled by “three simple ways,” engineered click-through funneling intended to steer your best intentions toward consumption. The actions that will shift things will require everything of you. They will enlarge your capacity. Make you tired. Keep you awake at night. They will also hold their own hidden joys—new kinds of life under the folds of what feels like sacrifice.
Remember, colonialism is a shape-shifter, a master of disguise, always assuming new forms. For this reason you must always examine yourself, your intentions, and the complicity of the groups to which you belong. This sounds awful, but in the end it will be good. You will not be confounded when you find you are wrong.
Yet, still - make beautiful things. Sell them, but also barter and give them away. Be generous with all you have. Remember that material is precious, always honor your materials. Honor them with care and also generosity.
Finally, take walks outside, Long ones and short ones, alone and with others. Walk slowly, breathe. Bring seeds with you, and plant your apple cores with care in some unmown spot. Likely, nothing will come of it. Let it be prayer, prophesy and incantation.