Yes, it’s like watching a trainwreck, but...

No, I won’t stop paying attention to the fires.

I won’t stop paying attention to the floods, the droughts, the storms, the temperatures, the air conditions, the earthquakes, the eruptions, the disappearing ice, the dying oceans, the deaths, or any of it.

Of course it breaks my heart. It immobilizes me with grief and depression and anxiety. It withers my hope. It wrecks my former beliefs that things might still change just enough. It robs meaning from living. It assaults my concept of the humaneness of humanity.

I feel all that anyways. I’ve been in that hole for personal reasons for over a year, since being assaulted by hospital staff and police, since any shred of belief that the system has any basis in reality was squashed out of me, since my dream and purpose were stolen by other people’s ignorance. I’m already that broken.

If I turn away from what’s happening in the world, if I “take a break” (no matter how well-intended), if I stick my head in the sand, if I even halfway pretend not to be aware of what is happening, if I think of my comfort as more important than the mother who gives us all life or than those who are dying… then there would be no point in anything and I would be no better than those who stole my life or those who steal it from us all.

It’s not about the airplane analogy of trying to put others’ oxygen masks on before my own. It’s about allowing and accepting truth. We’re crashing. I have a mask on but the oxygen supply is tainted by capitalism and patriarchy. I don’t need a pillow and earbuds. I need to know and understand the trajectory flight path and landing conditions and I need to know there are people who can fly a plane, or at least try to drop it somewhere without exploding, and I need to know the general status of the oxygen.

If I don’t pay attention, I’ll imagine worse than what’s really happening… because quite frankly, considering humanity’s lack of response to imminent oblivion, it could and probably should be worse… and because these things happening now are the things that have been the backdrop of my dreams as long as I can remember. We’re living in the deja vu side of things I’ve been seeing since before I understood them. So, noting the reality of the present keeps me grounded, in a way.

It puts my own problems into perspective. It doesn’t really matter if my own are insurmountable; they’re actually just small potatoes. At the same time, they’re symptoms of systemic problems which are directly related to the environmentally catastrophic age we now live in. My problems are my own little microcosmic reflection of the ideology murdering the entire world.

In that case, giving up on pursuing resolution in my own life would be tantamount to supporting the system - and I can’t do that.

Following the news (even though that’s suddenly less allowed in Canada, because of corporate/political bickering, and corrupt people holding information hostage) keeps me from forgetting that… otherwise, yes, I would give up.

I can’t change the world. I certainly can’t go off on the ecogypsy voyage I always dreamed of and finally started. I can’t even do much to change my own life.

But I can be aware. I can refuse to be another obediently ignorant ostrich. I can spread as much knowledge and discussion as my limited resources allow, to support the people who can do more.

I can keep doing my bit to disrupt the status quo that put me here and that put us all in this whole monstrous circumstance.

Anything else would be selfish.

Beyond that, paying attention to the disasters also means I see the others in the world who care, who are outraged or heartbroken or hopeful or whatever they feel - whatever they feel that makes them keep doing the right thing, simply because it’s the right thing to do.

You’re who make reality bearable.

Ann

https://fires.globalincidentmap.com