There was a time when I was happy and light. When I didn’t think about the climate impact of every action or item, how much plastic was involved, how much water was consumed.
I didn’t always see the world through one lens: is this or is this not hurting the environment? I could go to birthday parties, behold seas of styrofoam, and still have fun.
Sometimes I remember glimpses of those moments and it strikes me how completely the specter of environmental destruction has colored my worldview and made me less like myself. I have sincerely wondered what would happen to me the day that orangutans — a species I adore — goes extinct. I imagine feeling a huge, irreparable hole in the world. I bet others feel this way.
My state of mind was easy to ignore for a while. I’m naturally quite happy and sociable; I wasn’t sequestered in my room with the shades drawn. However, when I did the math, I was looking at hours spent judging people: what they ate, how they lived, what they drove, and how they voted.
Hate feels good because it’s vindicating — it turns attention away from the self to an outside perpetrator. Hate is also avoidance, enabling us to ignore the root cause of mental anguish.
I’ve learned that we may go to anger and blame because these emotions are easier to feel than grief, hurt, or loss of agency. In this way, hate appears as a secondary emotion, or a reaction to something more painful to face. I believe I preferred to experience anger over sadness and helplessness.
But hate comes at a price: you have to generate the hate first, and I think it’s quite possible that hate can kill you from the inside, like a poison you’re intending to brew for someone else but inadvertently ingest yourself.
This may have been obvious to some all along, but when I realized that criticizing and blaming are great ways to avoid your feelings, and avoid action, the senselessness of my turmoil became clear to me.
The intricate arguments and debate sessions, party of one, weren’t getting me any closer to my goals. I was performing mental self-torture. Exhausted and not very productive, I was failing to generate something positive with all my energy and passion.
I had closed in around myself, turning a gritty irritant over and over, like an oyster, only without a pearl to show for it.
I knew I had to do some emotional accounting and face my sadness. I sat in a thirty minute meditation, letting myself feel pure, unadulterated, bare bones grief over beloved species and whole ecosystems going extinct. No intellectualization, justification, or hope. Just breathing and a simple phrase — I’m sad and I’m sorry — over and over.
Being honest with myself about my grief was radical. Facing sadness made it less scary, lightened my heart, and opened me up to new perspectives.
I can now entertain the idea of living in this world as it is, without concocting lists of everything I want to be different; of focusing on connecting with others and finding a little joy. Ultimately, of ceding control and ceasing to carry around the burden of humanity’s sins like the Greek titan Atlas. Not I, nor you, are martyrs.
I am not recovered from being angry and judging. I work every day to re-frame my mind, and many days I fail. But I try to do this: when I feel anger or judgement rise, I ask myself, can I control this person’s actions? Can I do something constructive and kind to influence them? Is this a good use of my energy? If not, I take a deep breath and redirect my attention to something that might make me happy.
I will still be immensely sad at times, and that is OK. But it will not be the entirety of my life.
Ecological Morning 
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