THE HUMAN BRAIN
Loss can be a powerful catalyst of Behaviour Change
But will it come too late for Climate Change?
I was always an environmentalist at heart. Growing up and living in a human society with goals, jobs, getting up in the morning and earning money, it’s easy to become self-absorbed, cynical about good causes, ever more distanced from things like the environment or the human rights of some poor person in a third world country. It all just seems so distant and faraway. It can’t possibly touch us.
until it does
Coming down with stress at work was my tipping point and a shock to my system that changed me in ways that I could never have imagined. Having come to the point of suicide, I suddenly realised how fragile my life was, and how cruel and fake our corporate world is.
I realised how fragile ALL life on earth was.
Then my mother got cancer. Life became even more real, even more surreal. Now unemployed, and with a sick mother to take care of, I felt more powerful, more compassionate than ever.
Because embracing my own fragility had humbled me to such an extent that I realised that all I had left in me was love. The part of myself that this world, this society, had suppressed. And it was all for free. I felt the power of love and compassion rush through me.
We all have so much more love inside us than we think. A world built around greed and our daily “preoccupations”, not our real needs, has killed it. We can’t give love because we have forgotten how to feel it.
The impending climate apocalypse now suddenly makes complete sense. It is no wonder we caused this, if our very society has rejected love for centuries and centuries. We have filled a gaping void inside us with more luxuries, more industries, more environmental impacts that are increasing exponentially the more we move away from love and compassion.
I’ve said this before, humans are lost. We are unhappy. And the more unhappy we are, the more we need to destroy. The more we need our shopping therapy. The more we need revenge. We are attracted to negative emotions, destructive to others, and destructive to us.
Spoilt
I realise how we are all so incredibly spoilt as a species, each and every one of us. We solved our basic survival needs a very long time ago, and this has made us lose touch with what it’s like to lose something. What it’s like to have no food because humans have eaten it all, like some seals we made extinct.
Humans in fact only know how to gain, at the expense of nature. With 60% of animals lost since 1970, if we had any compassion left, any self-respect, any awareness at all of the reality, this would top news headlines across the world. It is a Holocaust a thousand times bigger than Hitler’s.
Life doesn’t take place in a Starbucks queue while you’re waiting for your frappuccino. It doesn’t take place while you’re scrolling through Instagram. It doesn’t take place on a screen you are chained to at work for 8 hours a day. Life is much bigger than that. It takes place outside of our confined world. It takes place in the coral reefs, where species are breathing their last breath, their last ray of sunshine, before extinction. We’re next.
I would like to think that I have made my turning point. For the time being, I have discovered writing. And I have began to appreciate every moment that passes in this beautiful place we call earth. It is all too precious to lose.
to be continued…
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