Climate adventure

I’ve been taking a nine-week … course? workshop? gathering? … called Living into the Earth Emergency. You can get an idea of what it’s about from the website, but basically about 20 people get together weekly to explore the planetary polycrisis, in a structured format.

For week #5 (Change and Change-Points), our homework was to think about “how change happens.” I’ve got some “external” ideas that I’ll lay out in another post, but it occurred to me that change also happens internally. So here’s my little report on that.

(Attitude) change

I really noticed the mood in the room during Week #3 (Probable and Possible Futures). It was grim: paralysis, fear, hopelessness, defeat.

Not good enough!

My climate attitude — like my climate information stream — has been unremittingly, grindingly negative, almost without relief. And it has been grinding me down, grinding us all down.

I don’t want to continue in that mindset. I need to shift to a mindset of adventure — give it the flavour of, say, a mountaineering expedition.

You go knowing it’s going to be difficult, that it won’t go according to plan, that it’ll be uncomfortable, dangerous at times, that you may not even make it back alive. But that’s the whole point of the exercise! That’s why you choose to do it, rather than sitting comfortably at home.

In the movie The Eiger Sanction (1975 mountaineering thriller), at a grim stage on the climb, one climber says to the Clint Eastwood character, “You’re very good. I have really enjoyed climbing with you.”

“We’ll make it,” Eastwood replies, to which the other man smiles wryly and says, “I don’t think so. But we shall continue with style.”

That’s the attitude I want to have, going forward: that we may or may not make it, but we’re going to continue with style. That’s my new, personal theory of change … and my way of staying sane and grounded, going forward into the adventure.

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