There are catastrophic things happening in the world around us. In many ways, it feels like humanity on the whole lives on borrowed time. Floods, earthquakes, and other weather disasters, wars, famine, addiction, houselessness, structural racism and oppression, and even genocides. Most of these involve at least some level of human culpability. As a human, I am involved in all of these things.
At the same time, I am sitting in a warm bed in a comfortable home in a pretty neighbourhood, with working electricity and high-speed internet. I have been able to eat healthy food without fear of running out, am covered by health insurance, and can use a library system with endless books to read and access to more films and television than I’ll ever watch. I am surrounded by love, family, and two extremely wonderful pets. I participate in a number of groups and have a deep sense of meaning and purpose. My practices include meditation, journaling, walking, and reading, which bring me joy and satisfaction. I feel a daily sense of gratitude.
In Al-anon, which has been an important part of my recovery from the effects of trauma, there’s a saying, “we can be happy whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.” In other words, our inner and felt sense of wellbeing isn’t dependent on other people changing. There’s something about acceptance that is critical for my own sense of OK-ness.
But, as I said earlier, the problems of other people and other beings are not just other people’s problems. So should I feel OK?
From the perspective of what I’ll use the word ‘consumerism’ to describe, no. I don’t use social media much anymore and in part, it’s because there’s a constant state of overstimulation and fear there, on every topic from war and climate chaos to politics, to stuff you need to be OK. Not being OK on some basic level is an unsurprising message in a place designed for advertising.
From that perspective, my OK-ness is freedom, it is choosing how I am and how to respond. It’s recognising there is not an immediate crisis that I need to attend to in my personal life.
And yet, this line of thinking can lead me astray, and definitely becomes its own consumerist seduction. The ‘wellness industry’ is massive, it’s all about feeling good, feeling good about yourself, feeling calm, feeling detached, having abundance, manifesting what you want, going to retreats and getting bodywork and never having anxiety.
What’s going on around us should make me anxious, and does. I don’t want to feel better simply because I have the option to live with my needs met. It’s not true that there is any actual security, if that’s defined as ‘protection from harm’ or any kind of predictability. When I see myself accurately I am interdependent with other people, and other beings.
There are not refuges untouched by the crises around us. I feel waves of grief, seeing images of people hurting and killing each other, of elephants being rounded up and massacred, of fires displacing people from their homes, of animals being abused for the food supply, of forests clear-cut and the mantle of the earth stripped for resources.
Real freedom isn’t being OK, in other words, it’s the capacity to feel, and to sit with the paradox that feelings include fear and grief as well as joy and love and wonder. Real freedom, perhaps, is OK-enough to look for what is within one’s capacity to address a crisis, and to be willing to do things that have a real impact- moving to a smaller place, contributing time and resources to community and collective efforts, letting go of the need to win or have everything I want. It’s discovering the ways I participate in dominance and extraction and avoiding denial or justifications. It’s the willingness to stay in the discomfort of awareness, not to feel like I’ve done my part by recycling or posting articles somewhere. It’s by committing to love and being with the trouble.
We are prone to find solutions and yet our solution-oriented thinking comes along with an inability to know everything and predict the outcomes of our actions. It comes with our modern aversion to taking responsibility- and leads to pretty terrible ‘solutions’ that benefit a few at the expense of most, or give us a false sense that we can keep on with short-term pleasure-seeking or reward-oriented behaviour. It leads to very selective evidence inputs, or the pretense of holism when we’re simply unable to be holistic while we’re in solutions-thinking, which doesn’t even include parts of our own brain and wisdom systems.
I can be with the trouble, I can notice the cracks, and there are no answers. I can slow down and be with other beings, I can witness and feel the shudders of death and destruction around us. I can love all the beings regardless of their actions or inactions. This will have an impact and it won’t solve anything. I am in wonder, I am OK, and it hurts sometimes.