Hope and patience are difficult to hold on to when you are suffering from Green Fatigue, that state experienced by people who are actively involved or concerned about environmental issues but who are suffering from distress and tension to the degree that it creates a secondary traumatic stress for them. I suggest that if you are against depleting and exhausting the world, yet feel depleted and exhausted yourself, it may be time to rethink your priorities.
A peaceful world has to start at home, in your own heart. Modernity plunged us into a world of beyond, beyond nature, culture and religion. It spawned the American Dream where more money, more fame, more glory and success are mandatory for happy endings. It seems that what we now need is a new dream of limits. Limiting our impact on the Earth’s resources and particularly limiting our own consumption as individuals. But how to live more simply in a complex and competitive world that is hardly fit for humans any more?
Here in Cambridge many people are doing jobs they hate for far too many hours in order to provide goods and services that other people don’t really need, but hardly anyone questions this psychotic paradigm.
Religion in many circles is considered anathema and you would be very likely to lose credibility if you admitted that you are in anyway religious. However it is interesting to ponder that Religion is the most powerful cultural force oriented around not doing things, and limiting excess. Don’t work one day a week. Rest!
Perhaps we don’t have to wait for this new paradigm but we could begin to examine why we feel the need to be so busy, so exhausted, stressed and weary. When was the last time you asked someone how they were and they said, “Fine, I’m not busy.” Let’s maybe find time to do nothing.
Don’t eat and drink more than you need, if you have two coats give one away, don’t covet things that other people have. Not to suggest we should retreat into the past but it would be good to have a vision for a new spirituality of restraint to be part of the evolving consciousness of the human race.
Do we really need to buy more stuff or replace things that simply need repairing? Cambridge is leading the Repair Cafe movement – there are cafes springing up in our city and outlying villages.