Side Effects

I am writing this post in one of two brief days that we are at home this month. The pace towards finishing the YERT film is quickening. As a result, we are spending a number of weeks in Louisville, KY, where Mark's partner in film-making, Ben, lives. This push to the end is exciting, of course--it's something we've been waiting for--but there are side effects to living with this kind of intensity.

A week or so ago, I spent a few days transcribing two key interviews for the film. Both interviewees were brilliant and wise; their words were rich with importance. What they had to say, however, was unsettling. Amongst those who watch the health of our planet and interpret her uncomfortable readjustments to our demands, there is a deep, sad undercurrent of nostalgia. It is almost as if they (the environmentalists/soothsayers in the interviews) have already lain out their mourning clothes, already wept for the most bitter and immediate loss, and are now practicing for the role of survivors. We may come through this ecological collapse alive, they say in steady and thoughtful tones, but it will not be the world we remember in our narratives of Paradise, the one we idolize in symbols and songs, the one we love.

Hope does not grow in the same bed as naivete. Hope requires that we recognize the full scope of our impending struggle and, seeing it unblinkingly, decide we are capable of dealing with it. That is a perspective that is reached by choice, not forced through by the weight of facts alone. For one thing, facts can easily remain merely intellectual abstractions, something you make yourself imagine by squeezing shut your eyes and concentrating very hard. The possibility of climate refugees, mass famines, and violent water wars seem little different from the histories of genocide and cruelty--tragic but immutable, moving but eternally distant. The little duties of day-to-day life are thick enough to bury those concerns--usually. But there was something about listening intently to the voices of these two sages and faithfully typing their words that narrowed the wiggle room in my attention. Not only was the fate of the Earth an image I did not have to imagine on my own, I couldn't look away. Accepting these predictions as realities, hope revealed itself for what it was--toil.

The last straw came a night or two later when "The Pianist" was on TV. I had been studying all day and had turned on the television to fill the last hour or so until Mark was ready for bed. If you haven't seen the film, it is only pertinent that you know that it is a Holocaust story. I watched humans do to each other the most illogical, hateful, horrific things we are capable of . . . and for what reason? A nation in economic distress and social disgrace, looking for someone to bear the guilt and receive the angry debt? A paralyzing, dehumanizing fear of the future? A culture of bitter prejudice and heavy-handed ideologies? These are not unfamiliar specters. If even one of these environmental prophets' predictions should come true--say, a wide-spread water shortage--what will keep these horrors from my door? Won't the powerful always put their own prosperity at the cost of another's suffering? Daily examples, the world over, answer my questions with chilling certainty.

Needless to say, it was not in peace that I went to bed that night. Mark and I talked for a long time before we slept. I can't say that we dispelled the dark shadows that had been gathering. We did, however, plant a few more of our hopes in the ideas of Transition Town, a community-based sustainability movement. And we allowed our conversation to drift to our plans to build an Earthship, a fully off-grid house that is all but a living protector from the perils of an unstable world. And I took comfort in turning from the panic, the dread, even the nostalgia evoked by my dark ruminations and burying myself in my husband's arms.

I can't really be certain that any of my worries will take shape as I imagine them. But I don't think it matters, really. The true test is not in predicting the exact, correct timeline for struggle--it is guaranteed that struggle will come to us some day, some way. The true test is in finding hope, toiling for it, and rearing it into a full-grown confidence that we are able to move through pain to renewal. We must live with the faith that the principles we believe in--love, community, learning, and true growth--still and always mark out the best possible path. We're working on building this kind of integrity in our lives. YERT is dedicated to cultivating that kind of hope and joy in the people it touches. Yes, part of the journey is letting go of our nostalgic longing for the world as it once was . . . and that process has some unpleasant side effects. But healing is on the wing. I trust. I hope.