I’ve never been very good at crying.
I’ve lost track of the times in domestic conflicts when I’ve spun endless rational arguments while my partner at the time simply cries. Emotions don’t usually flood over in my family, and I seem to have maintained that tradition.
Except for today. This evening I found myself on a rooftop, sobbing uncontrollably.
It had been a slow day at work, some report writing, a bit of research, emailing. I had some loose time to use at the end and found myself reading an interview of Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar and ecophilospher. Few of the grave facts that Joanna spoke about were new to me – that our biosphere/planet is currently going through its 6th mass extinction since life began, caused directly by humans, that we may have passed the threshold of preventing runaway climate change, and with it may come the eventual collapse of the planet’s life-support systems and civilization as we know it. I had read about them in various forms over years, and treated them as I treat most knowledge – intellectually. More facts confirming humanity’s unique suicidal tendencies…
5pm came, and I packed up, said bye to the other staff and walked off towards home. But somehow those words had sunk in, past my mind, and were percolating through my body. Stepping out to the street I felt a wet, floating vulnerability drift around my limbs. The familiar aching feeling began behind my eyes. As I walked through the usual path, along the side of the rubbish and sewerage-infested Banani ‘lake’, all of the suffering of the world was suddenly around me. It’s usual to see beggers, the homeless and severely disabled people here, whose visceral presence I have never been able to evade. But somehow this feeling was different – it wasn’t about an individual’s suffering, it was the very earth itself, the ground that I walked on, the ultimate cradle for our collective existence.
A large black bird arched through the sky, and for a moment I saw everything around me as a mirage – the glass, steel and concrete of one of Bangladesh’s most wealthy areas, the polished urban environment that stands for success and which is replicated and desired all around the world. In that moment I saw it how it really was – a thin, fragile layer built from materials, energy and industrial processes that were all unsustainably harvested, ultimately built on borrowed time, and energy. Like the cartoon character who has run off the cliff, we keep running on invisible ground, faster, hoping we can get to the other side before we fall. The least developed countries haven’t stepped off the cliff, but are running madly towards it to try to catch up to the wealthy runners ahead of them. Our ground has seemed so solid up to now.
As I walked back I saw and felt the brittle human presence around me – the boisterous young businessmen loitering at the chai-stalls, the rickshaw drivers angling for customers, and the laughing kids gathered on the pavements. Those hopes of a rising nation, rushing to join a world order that is accelerating in the wrong direction.
My eyes were thawing now but had not yet melted; I reached my apartment block and laboured up the six floors to the roof. Stepping outside, the sounds of the Dhaka mega city washed up to meet me, as the space all around opened up to a sea of white apartments rising amidst crumbling grey buildings, half-completed structures, and the ubiquitous green umbrellas of tall coconut trees. I stood there, closed my eyes, and felt my heart open up to the world, the tears finally flooding out. A simple, most humbling feeling, my body seemed to become a common channel of the world, opening itself up to the pain being suffered by the earth everywhere, continuously. For once my mind was silent as my heart instead listened to the world. The thousand upon thousand acres of clear-felled forests, where once the most complex ecosystems thrived. The dying oceans, with their disappearing fish and bleached coral reefs. The Bengali tigers here in Bangladesh, competing with villagers for food in their dwindling habitat. These scientific facts that had greeted me countless times over breakfast through a newspaper column were now visceral.
It was my privilege to have this experience – my (relative) affluence here meant I had the space and time for it, while so many others toiled away without choice. Yet how often had I opened myself up to this feeling? How often have any of us stopped to actually feel what is happening to the very earth beneath our feet? Feel with our hearts, rather than analyse with our heads.
The wave subsided almost an hour later, and my mind regained its usual dominance. I think (or rather feel!) however that I’m not quite the same; sensitised ever so slightly more to the seamless, invisible destruction that rolls on. But an opened window lets in both heat and cold – I also feel my perception of the world’s constantly unfolding beauty sharpened.
Joanna Macy writes about the proper place of despair in the process of system change, as a necessary bridge between the protective numbness that we use as a shield against suffering, and a grounded, empowered stance that is the basis for action and movement. It is a bridge that we often cross, and re-cross for loved ones, but seldom do for our broader family – our fellow species and the biosphere that ultimately supports us all.
More of Joanna Macy's writings can be found here.
