ENVIRONMENT
Are you a Closeted Environmentalist?
Come out and embrace your Superpowers. Here’s my coming out story
1. A True Introvert is born
I grew up on a beach in Greece, collecting sea shells. Admiring pretty beach flowers before they became extinct. Spending days and days on end locked in my room, painting with watercolours. I was the classic introvert, all the way to the end of the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Happy to be in my own world, away from people, immersed in my thoughts, in my scientific explorations. At the age of 7, I had already created my own Seed Vault and started studying the biology of plants.
2. A sensitive “sissy boy” with unusual interests
My mother was concerned about how “sensitive” I was. A lot of things didn’t make sense to me, I felt humans were vulgar, selfish, agressive. I preferred plants because they were “silent miracles”. Nature’s wonders, unravelling their beauty almost overnight without any fanfare, brutality or force. They simply let their actions speak for themselves. And then a human foot rises and stomps on a wildflower. As a child I was a prolific artist, using art as an escape route from this “brutal” world, and as a door to my inner world: imaginative, creative, compassionate, insightful and attentively curious.
3. Misunderstood and Bullied
People misunderstood my sensitivity for weakness. Some thought I stayed away from people because I was insecure and afraid of them. But if you know a thing or two about introverts, we don’t do small talk. Others saw my “sensitivity” as an opportunity to attack me, being a “loner” with no allies and “strange” interests in plants and paintings. At school I was called either a “sissy boy” or a “nigger”, depending which part of me people wanted to insult. Later on in life, as I climbed through the corporate ladder towards success, I was “ganged on” and bullied several times in corporate office wars, just for being what people thought was an easy target: a brown, gay, foreigner who was always too willing to help out with projects.
4. Suppressing my Superpowers
This environment made me question and doubt myself from a very early age. I was ashamed of my “sensitivity”, especially as a male living in an alpha male world. I ended up believing the narrative that was fed to me: that I was weak. That caring for nature is for “sissies”. That humans need to be bullies and aggressors in order to survive. Being smart, sensitive and full of intuition was a weakness. I didn’t know yet that I posessed unusual Superpowers.
5. The Denial Years: throwing myself into Education
But my curiosity never failed me. Still ashamed of my sensitivity, I threw myself into what I loved, what distracted me: the joy of creativity and knowledge. As a true introvert hungry for perfection and knowledge, I went on to gain 3 scientific qualifications: Chemistry, Plant Molecular Biology, and Food Science. I became a respected, peer-reviewed scientist.
6. The Corporate Years: selling out
Continuing to deny my true gift, I followed a career consisting of job after job that utilised my intelligent brain, but never my heart, my compassion, my sensitivity. I helped unhealthy pet food manufacturers. Online gambling casinos. Oil companies. Defence industry contractors and arms manufacturers, you name it. I had sold myself out completely, for the price of a salary.
7. The Burnout
The reckoning came in the form of anxiety, burnout and exploitation at work. My oppressive boss had led me to suicide hotlines, and I felt that I was soon going to die. And then the realisation happened: if I die, I want to at least die as myself, doing the things that matter to me. Money, unethical jobs, toxic people and toxic corporate offices are not for me. I want to live for what is important to me: my family, my values, the causes I care about. I only have one life.
8. The Enlightenment
I quit my high-earning Marketing Research Director job to save myself, and wrote a book. I wrote hundreds of blogs. I joined Extinction Rebellion. I became an advocate for occupational mental health. For the environment. For equality and discrimination. Because they are all connected. They all stem from white man’s delusion of superiority.
This is where I am right now. Unemployed, but alive. Because I am Me. I am finally Me. Yes, I am sensitive. But I have more compassion, more intuition, more diligence, more “big picture” thinking, and definitely more courage and determination than most people. This is a story in the making. A journey back to who I am, who I was born to be.
Many of us are Closet Environmentalists. Ashamed of our sensitivity. Avoiding conflict with spineless agressors. We prefer to observe, to analyse, to just watch the world before we say our piece. And the more we see the pain and injustice, especially with how we treat nature, the more we sometimes feel hopeless, isolated, and helpless. We feel ashamed about caring. We succumb and accept the bitter realities of the world.
If this is you, then I am making a plea to you. Come out now. Come out and join us. Because we need you. The Earth needs you. And you need you too.
You can follow me on Twitter @99blackbaloons
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