‘The solution is that we need to build a kinder and braver world.’
—Lady Gaga, in conversation with the Dalai Lama at the US Conference of Mayors, Indianapolis, 2016
‘Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps. We have to hear the bells of mindfulness that are sounding all across our planet.’
—Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have
How to join the dots between all the issues raised in this book? The women’s movement, equal rights and social justice in general, and the pressing need to create fairer systems for everyone, but also in specific cases: in the fashion and food supply chains, and in workplaces where discrimination and harassment occur? Where to begin to spur change when it comes to intimidating issues like modern slavery and climate change? How to engage different generations, and grassroots communities? Make positive change in our own lives and the lives of those around us, then send these good vibrations rippling outward to reach governments and important decision-makers? How to not decide it’s all too damn hard, give up and go home?
I don’t mind telling you, I’ve thought that myself a few times. Really, can I make a difference beyond giving up plastic bags? Where is the key, the mythical silver bullet, when you need it, eh? Of course, it’s nowhere, because there is no silver bullet. Change is as hard as it is valuable. The quick fix is a lie. But … there is this one thing.
According to Christine Wamsler, professor of sustainability science at Lund University, mindfulness can help. She defines it as ‘more than just moment-to-moment awareness. It is a kind, curious and non-judgemental awareness that helps us relate to ourselves, others, and our environment with compassion.’
We can access it by meditation and yoga, those well-known chill-out tools that can make us feel more grounded, more content, but Wamsler’s research suggests deeper powers. In an article for The Conversation, she writes that ‘mindfulness can not only change how we think about the social and environmental crises that affect our world, but can also help us to take the actions needed to build a more sustainable society.’1 Through it, we might increase our sensitivity to context, and access greater empathy for people and planet. It can’t hurt that meditation helps reduce stress and boost focus too.
I always roll my eyes at those fairy stories where the one thing the questing heroine is searching for turns out to have been right in front of her nose the whole time. I mean, surely the answer to the ‘How to change the world’ question is: get rid of Trump and his ilk from the corridors of power, banish all Weinstein-like bosses and defeat the NRA. Or it’s mass divestment from the fossil fuel industry. It’s smash the capitalist system and rebuild the economy, as Tim Jackson suggests, based on care, craft, culture and creativity. Surely?
Bah-bow. The answer is both simpler and infinitely more complex. The answer is us. That is the one grand, overarching thing I’ve learned during the collecting and telling of the stories shared in this book, and it’s also what connects them all. You can’t see or touch it. It’s hard to even describe it, but it is there.
You might call it the power of the human spirit, or talk in terms of internality, or just plain humanity. Some bring God into it. Personally, I think of it more as a spark, but do feel free to give it your own name, shape and description. Lucy Aitken Read calls it ‘the liveness’. STRAWkler Harriet Spark saw it in Great Barrier Reef; Tim Silverwood in the magnitude of the oceans. It is plain to see in Indigenous Australians’ connection to their land, and it’s there in a subtler way through every one of these stories of collaboration. It was present on the first Earth Day, when Gaylord Nelson described his vision for ‘an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures’.
It’s in the coral polyps and the zooxanthellae and the polar bears and the vulnerable speckled warblers, and the butterflies dancing above Andrew Barker’s seedlings. Surely you saw it on his Grow Free tables. It’s in the giving. It’s also in the tears over species loss and the passion to do something about it, and it flows through the rivers, even the ones choked by garbage, in fact more so there. It is the trees of course. I have felt it there myself most strongly, when I put my hands on their trunks in the park when no one is looking, and whisper my apologies for the graffiti some kid carved on the bark and the pissing dogs and the paper this is printed on.
It is in recognising that we are part of Nature, not above it; and that as the protest signs say, there is no Planet B.
The Gaia hypothesis proposes that all living and non-living elements on Earth are connected and synergise together to keep life in balance. While much of the scientific community rejects the theory (which was popularised by British scientist James Lovelock in the 1970s), still more the suggestion that the Earth is somehow ‘alive’, the idea is echoed through history and religion across cultures, from Plato and Buddhism to all the poets, painters, artists and writers who have personified Nature in their work, including me.
The Dalai Lama reminds us that it is accessible and universal. ‘My call for a spiritual revolution is not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow otherworldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical reorientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self. It is a call to turn toward the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others’ interests alongside our own.’
The spark in my mind’s eye ignites from a combination of our connectivity and innate creativity, compassion and empathy. It’s the meeting of mind and heart, and it understands its place in the greater whole. Do you see it now? No need to try to catch it. You have your own. Enough talk. Now go, do.