Pretty enough?
I am not a huge fan of deep introspection. I’m totally happy for others to do it but I like to skate on the surface of most things, especially feelings. But this weekend, I was forced to think a little too deeply for my liking about myself. Ryan, my podcast co-host, is completely responsible because he questioned the validity of a comment that I have frequently said to him and to a number of our podcast guests.
The comment is this:
“I have come to the environmental party a little late in life and I don’t know that much.”
Ryan called bullshit.
And so I spiralled.
It just happened to be a very wet and windy weekend, which, for some, is perfect contemplative weather. It certainly added to my woe. I walked up and down Mt Majura in the wind and rain, I lay listlessly on the couch, I ate a loaf of bread and I stared at a blank white wall. Come Monday and I found myself with a very bad cold, a stomach ache and some serious black bags under my eyes.
At first, I thought that the core of my overly dramatic melancholic state of being was two concerns: your age and the requisite level of knowledge and/or experience that one must possess should one be intent on contributing to efforts to save our world?
After much, much moaning — and a three hour wait at the COVID drive-in — I have concluded that both of these issues are trivial and are also absolutely not the real issue.
On age
Life is a journey and you should want and expect to continuously evolve, right? There are countless examples of people writing their first book when they are 50, running their first marathons when they are 70, breaking world records when they are 110. If we stayed the same as what we were when we were younger it would be a little boring. Age does not matter.
On knowledge
I have had to spend much of the past two days asleep on the couch, suffering from a cold that I am sure was brought on by my wallowing. When I have been awake, I have found myself, somewhat masochistically, reading many summary outcomes from COP 26. There is an awful lot to get across. And this is just from the past two weeks. There has been over thirty years of climate research. There are many reports to read and remember, so much so that it is improbable to think that any one person can possibly know everything. Therefore, my response to this issue has to be the same as it is with age: exactly how much you know does not matter. The focus instead, should be on one’s engagement, interest and openness to learn about the issue.
But…
Even though I can easily dismiss both age and knowledge, getting involved later, coupled with concerns over whether I know enough to get involved, has — for me — come with bucket loads of guilt. This is not great as, already, my head and shoulders are weighed down with a consciousness of all that I am not doing or not doing well. There is: the parenting guilt (are my kids eating vegetables, doing enough exercise, getting enough sleep); the home versus work guilt (am I spending enough time at work, am I spending enough time); and the existential guilt, (am I doing all of the things a “successful” 45-year-old should be doing?). And now, we will add the environmental guilt. And this list is huge. Here are some examples: I drive a diesel car; I used plastic wrap yesterday; I bought a take-away coffee in a take-away cup last week; I used my dryer on the weekend; I buy way too many earrings; and I once had a sneaker addiction.
The environmental guilt seems somehow heavier and harder to shift than the parental, home v work and existential types of guilt, especially right now. It seems ever-present and, unlike the others, unable to be ignored. Almost every moment of every day I feel I am forced to face the fact that I absolutely and unequivocally have contributed — and continue to contribute — to the climate and biodiversity emergency our planet is facing.
The guilt leads to shame, perhaps a more complicated emotion than guilt. I can own up to my guilt, but shame? How do you engage with others when you feel humiliated and foolish and so very, very exposed? Well, now we are getting somewhere way deeper aren’t we? My somewhat lame excuse of age and lateness is a cover. I use them in an effort to escape any form of judgement. It is almost a desperate plea for forgiveness.
Introspection over? No, there is more, (Ryan, I think I may hate you).
Thanks to Justine Clarke’s awesome two part ABC TV series, Going Country, I recently realised that I like country music. As lot of the lyrics in country music are profound and can be interpreted in a number of ways. For example, I used to think Kasey Chamber’s song “Am I not pretty enough” was a sad song, almost a cry for acceptance. But, in a conversation about the song on the show, someone spoke about how the song is more of a challenge — it’s more of an angry anthem because what Kasey is really saying is that she is absolutely pretty enough and she owns exactly who and what she is.
I like this second interpretation way better. And, as I listened to the song on repeat, a habit I have when writing, I realised that this is almost exactly the attitude that my friend Sarah, embodies and exudes.
Like me, Sarah is a mum, a full-time employee, likes to run and is middle aged. I first met Sarah on the soccer pitch. We weren’t playing soccer, our kids were (although later on we tried and I ended up having a knee reconstruction — it turns out that there are some things that I may be too old to get into). One day, on the sidelines of the soccer pitch, we started talking and I’m not sure we ever stopped. With Sarah, once you start chatting, it is hard to stop (or even slow down) as she is super engaging and super enthusiastic.
2018 — the first time our kids were playing Saturday soccer together — was, for Sarah, a catalytic time. Three years ago, just prior to the last federal election, Sarah attended an Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) meeting, curious to know more about the statements ACF was making during the election campaign. Now Sarah sits on the board of ACF council, runs Canberra’s first ACF community group, which has been the most “meaningful, time consuming, purposeful thing I have done (aside from having kids)” and is also on the board of the ACT Conservation Council.
“I went along, took part in a simple action, and two years later I am completely immersed in the field.”
Sarah is an inherently optimistic person. Far from wallowing in not attending the party earlier, she sees the time now as an opportunity.
“It doesn’t matter when you join as long as you join. You can be 6. You can be 15. You can be 110. Everyone has something to bring and the strength of the movement isn’t just in numbers: it is in diversity and engagement.”
Sarah’s actions are as a connector and facilitator. She is a prolific social media operator, always posting and sharing content across many platforms, tagging various people along the way. Her role as a connector, along with her work on boards and as a community group facilitator, seems simple but is, actually, genius and has incredible impact. She enthusiastically shares and shares and shares, linking people and their ideas to other people and their ideas because from her vantage point she sees where some great possibilities and potential lie.
“Relationships are the pivot on which a lot of community is going to turn …there are so many people out there who have this great creativity and great ideas and great skills and it’s really about facilitating the opportunities for them to be able to make those things and make them happen.”
Connecting people and their ideas. Community coming together and having important conversations. Learning. Learning. Learning. These are all things that we can each do, and perhaps have to do, to forge a path forward.
So, am I not pretty enough to help save the world? You know that there are a load of rather unique looking animals, trees and plants in our eco-system, right? But, each of them is lovely in their own way and each of them, importantly, has a role to play in our ecosystem. This brings me to my final epiphany for this story, again, linked also to something that Sarah covered in the podcast interview: the “environmental movement” is actually about so much more than the environment. What we are all really grappling with is identifying and agreeing on what our future will be. You can’t ever be late to that conversation nor can you expect to have all of the answers — no-one knows for sure exactly what the future holds. The future is uncertain because it is unwritten and, therefore, as Sarah shows, isn’t it so much better, so much more exciting and so much more satisfying to jump in, learn all you can, collaborate with others, and help write it, in any and all the ways that you can.
“All we know is uncertain things are going to happen. We just don’t know what those things are going to be…it’s not necessarily going to be all bad and it’s not necessarily going to be all good, we just know it’s going to be different and I think, in that, lies promise. There’s the opportunity to do the things that make more of the positive things happen.”
