What Cannot Be Said Must Be Wept

There is so much to say, it is hard to know where to begin. We have reached it, the great unknowing: the great unknown. The answers are no longer available to us. The rules have changed. We do not know what next year, next month, next week, or even what tomorrow will look like.

Here, from where I write to you, the world appears stable. And it will likely remain so for some time. There, in Los Angeles, my second home, the world is unstable—and will likely remain so for some time.

So where do we go?

What do we do when the future is unknown?

The power on the planet is shifting.

Energy is seeking a return to equilibrium.

We have been fed a narrative of linearity our whole lives. Every climate report centers it: goal-based thinking, ten steps, a plan. Reduce X emissions by Y date to prevent Z problems. There! Easy. Done 😌

Except it didn’t work. It only got worse.

What happens when linearity goes out the window? What happens when the present moment is the only thing that exists? How do we survive the tension of not knowing?

How do we survive?

---

Back then we were trying to scare people to pay attention. You don’t [know] how bad it is with climate change, you don’t know how many nuclear warheads are on high alert. Get roused. And it wasn’t working.

People thought the public was apathetic. But I realized the etymology of the word...

Early 17th century: from French apathie, via Latin from Greek apatheia, from apathēs "without feeling,” from a- "without” plus pathos "suffering.”

It was not that people didn’t care or didn’t know, but that people were afraid to suffer. It was the refusal or the incapacity to suffer.

---

These italicized words above, from environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, explain why we are in a state of emergency.

Linearity is not the only gospel. Happiness is another. Without being in touch with our grief, with collective suffering, and with the inherent pain of being in a body, we stagnate, freeze, and become unable to step forward in alignment.

From this place of stagnation, we shame and we blame. We find individuals to fixate on, instead of being with our grief and the realization that we are not separate. The truth is, we are part of a greater whole and therefore responsible.

We are embedded in these systems. We cannot extract ourselves from them. We cannot point fingers. The onus for change is only, ever, and always on us.

in these devastating, heart-opening times, i can offer you hope

it is not hopeless

it is never hopeless

our hope lies in each other and inside our selves and our ability to transmute

we have all the solutions we need to fix the intersecting mental health, climate change, and wealth inequality crises

we have all the tools we need to end colonial capitalism patriarchal human supremacy

it won’t be pretty or easy or pleasant or comfortable, but it will be possible

something new is coming

but first, something old must be destroyed

today maybe all you can do is survive

maybe today all you can do is stay alive

but when you are ready

today or tomorrow or somewhere down the line of linear time, you can change the world by changing yourself: by transmuting your emotions, i.e. feeling them without judgement or stories

let the energy move through you

crack open to grief and find new worlds

unleash your anger, without target

muddle in the confusion, dance in the fear

this is how we survive, this is how we stay alive

we let go of knowing what tomorrow brings and we feel today fully

we don’t push it down or look away

we don’t go back to business as usual

we let the outside change the inside

we remember that we are the climate

and we are the change

---