Eco-Anxiety
“Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home”
- The Lost Words Blessing[1]
Eco-anxiety is somewhat crippling, right? Your routine clatters your life onwards, yet in the background looms the knowledge that we’re all set to participate in a catastrophic process of environmental collapse. How are you meant to make sense of your life and place in the world when the future seems so unrelentingly bleak? I’ve found myself swerving furiously between willful half-ignorance and naked despair, yet it hasn’t been a uniformly negative experience – in fact, this struggle has changed me for the better. Like Dostoyesky experienced before a firing squad, crisis offers clarity – an opportunity to unlearn lies and relearn truths. We were all born into an assumption that nature exists to be dominated, but as that certainty unravels before us we have the opportunity to think differently. I can only speak for myself, but eco-terror has helped teach me to value, and to love, the natural world around us, and that has to be worth something.
I’ve spent most of my life living in rural Oxfordshire, though until recently the expanse of greenery around me never meant anything more than a pleasant visual backdrop – what did nature have to do with me? In 2018, I left the UK with the intention of travelling almost indefinitely, convinced that I would find a better life somewhere far away, but in the back of my mind an awareness of the climate crisis was already at work. As I roamed from mega-city to mega-city, each blazing away with mass material aspiration, I found I couldn’t think about anything else. How could I just jet around the world aimlessly when we're on the verge of a mass ecological and social unravelling? The trip began to feel meaningless at best, ridiculous at worst, and so after six months I came home – wearied and cynical.
This inner-crisis had changed something in me though. After months of alienating urban mania I now saw my rural home-scape with new eyes, and felt drawn into spending my days enveloped by greenery. I began with an extended trip along the westerly stretch of the River Thames and felt the truth of Paul Kingsnorth’s words – “there is magic in this landscape.”[2]. I trekked miles around the area once dominated by the ancient Wychwood Forest, slowly building an understanding with the tapestry of pasture, woodland and floodplain, feeling ridiculous joy when I successfully identified a tree or picked out a badger sett. A near century of intensive farming may have scoured much of our countryside of wild creatures and flowers, but all around us the miracle of life rolls onwards still, and the experience of learning about it is simultaneously energising and deeply calming. Why do we spend so much time anxiously chasing ego irrelevancies? This is what matters: the web of life of which we form a part; the landscapes that shaped our ancestors; the pleasant humility of smallness.
Professor Jem Bendell wrote recently that “the climate crisis invites us to engage with the mystery of life with fresh eyes and open hearts.”[3]. Wouldn’t it be crazy to ignore that invitation? Nature offers us a connection to an ongoing continuity, and reminds us that as scary as circumstances might seem from an individual human perspective, life has dealt with worse – life will go on. I think the poet Theodore Rotheke was right when he wrote: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see”[4] – eco-anxiety has guided me to something that isn’t hope, but feels like it, and for that I’m intensely grateful.
by Will Hazell
References
[1] Lost Words: Spell Songs, Lost Words: Spell Songs [Quercus Records, QRCD04, 2019] [on CD]
[2] Paul, Kingsnorth, ‘The Best Place in the World’, in Caught by the River: A Collection of Words on Water, ed. by Jeff Barrett and Robin Turner (London: Cassell, 2008).
[3] Jem, Bendell, ‘Don’t police our emotions – climate despair is inviting people back to life’, Jem Bendell.com [accessed 10 October 2019].
[4] Theodore Roethke, ‘In a Dark Time’, in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, ed. by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade (New York: HarperColllins, 1992).
About The Green Line
The Green Line is part of a third year collaborative project exploring our personal connection with the ongoing climate crisis. Over the next month we will be publishing a variety of pieces from the student community.
Find out more about The Green Line here.