Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Active Hope

Any situation we face can develop in a range of different ways — some much better, others much worse. Active Hope involves identifying the outcomes we hope for and then playing a role in moving toward them. We don’t wait until we are sure of success. We don’t limit our choices to the outcomes that seem likely. Instead, we focus on what we truly, deeply long for, and then proceed to take determined steps in that direction.

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Since Active Hope doesn’t require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we focus on our intention and let it be or guide.

Macy, Joanna and Chris Johnstone. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power, Revised Edition. New World Library, 2022. p. 37, 5 (italics in original)

Cause of stuggling

I think a root cause for why I have been struggling so much with everything in life is that I am desperately fearful and unhappy, and I don’t know what to do about it. Our civilizational crisis makes me feel more anger, sadness, grief, and isolation than I know how to cope with. Since I don’t have a stable emotional platform, everything else feels precarious and I am constantly both anxious and self-rebuking for having ended up in this situation and not knowing what to do.

This sense of profound and inescapable crisis traces back at least to my time in government, when I realized that it is in no sense capable, or even directed toward, solving our actual problems. Our government works for the car companies and fossil fuel companies, and hardly thinks at all about the long-term future. Life since has felt like more rejection by dysfunctional systems. These emotions are intensely alienating, since people are naturally drawn to and want to please people who seem to have it all figured out, while they are repulsed by those in despair.

The world in which our minds and emotions evolved bears little resemblance to the world which they are now trying to cope with, leaving us unbalanced and floundering. It is hard to even imagine what the way out could be, when it seems like we citizens collectively respond to each new challenge and setback with another round of self-destructive choices. We see the cliff edge approaching, and choose to jam down the accelerator even harder.

Related:

Late spring flowers

Flowers are coming up gloriously across Toronto. I have been enjoying the rich red and alien shape of Canada Columbine and, in the last few days, seeing the pink of Common Milkweed flowering, with flowers emerging in clusters. Black Cohosh cultivated on campus is already producing flower wands, just still green instead of white, and it is spreading in rhizomal clusters around where flower wands appeared last year.

I am checking iNaturalist daily for when the Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) bloom begins, at which point I will be leading a city-wide search to improve the data on where this plant is present.

Living history

‘History fan’ and master of long-form podcasts Dan Carlin circulated an email yesterday which describes several things which I have also been powerfully feeling:

But, we ARE living through absolutely momentous times (and dangerous ones). Don’t allow yourself to be gaslit about that. Any fan of History can see it. And as someone who fretted for years (and bored the people around me to tears) about the trends we are now seeing play out, it’s personally a bit of a crisis for me. I spent my life since I was a teen paying attention to ideas, and approaches and arguments to keep from reaching the point we’ve reached. I wrapped my whole career around it. I am less well equipped (and of course totally inexperienced) with dealing with things now that we have arrived here. I feel I have less useful commentary to offer. I don’t know how to get us out of the mess we’re in. At that point what’s there to say that’s helpful? I am sure there’s something. But I haven’t figured out yet what it is.

But it’s haunting me. And it is thwarting me. It is sapping my energy and I feel angry and I feel stuck. Normally when I have things to say I will talk your ear off. I am silent these days. I’ve turned inward and want to read and study, rather than communicate. Even around the house. My wife is driving me nuts saying “are you ok?” all the time. But I am worried about the future. I think all intelligent Americans are. And like a computer that gets co-opted trying to figure out the value of pi to the last digit, my mind goes over our circumstances, endlessly and without answers or resolution.

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I still go in the studio every morning. It just is slow going and frustrating, and the days when the energy and Muse/inspiration come together as they need to for a successful end result are fewer per week than they used to be. And maybe this is just age, maybe it’s that the traditional vast amounts of coffee seem almost powerless over me now, or maybe its the weight of the times in which we live. It would be nice to not be thinking about politics or the latest dangerous, divisive nightmare every day from the moment we wake up. But that’s not the reality in which we currently live.

I share that sense of having prepared all my life for this moment, and yet often feeling uncertain and disempowered now that it is here.

Meadoway 2025 report

I have been suffering for a week from a vexing stomach bug that has had me living on nothing but an hourly soda cracker and oral rehydration salts.

It has nonetheless been very exciting to read about the excellent work being done by the Meadoway project, in which a 16 km stretch of hydro corridor has been turned into a giant re-naturalization project. The corridor runs all the way from the eastern edge of the Don Valley to the Rouge and Toronto Zoo area.

Their 2025 annual report is detailed, beautifully illustrated, and inspiring. Toronto has a great opportunity to add new ways of getting around the city on foot and by bike, avoiding cars, while achieving all the erosion and biological benefits of re-introducing native plants at scale.

Their restoration manual is highly interesting too, and shows a laudable desire to share lessons with everybody.

As soon as ground conditions, weather, and health allow, I want to take my first real bike trip of the year to see the early emergence of the plants of interest out in Scarborough.