I catch myself in a happy moment, and the trigger of a smile halts me. Corrects me.
How can I be happy in this moment, when there is so much wrong?
And so, I spiral back down to anxiety and depression. About living in the wrong era, about being too sensitive for this modern world, too scared to step up to it, to use my voice no matter if it shakes.
If you’ve felt this too, you know exactly what I’m talking about. That specific, gnawing weight of environmental anxiety. It’s not quite like other worries. It’s heavier. More constant. And for those of us who feel it, really feel it, there’s no going back to ignorance.
What Environmental Anxiety Actually Feels Like
Since I was young, and more strongly with each passing year, I fight knowing of the suffering in the world. What hurts the most is the suffering of nature and wildlife. What I witness hurts me physically. Just knowing it exists keeps me in a state that feels heavy to say the least.
I see how much of a wear on resources just my existence is. And I feel it every time I use, take, or even borrow. When making a purchase, I can see that I’m taking from another. A wild animal, an entire family or plenty more. And if it’s not needed, I certainly feel better passing it by.
It’s a push and pull. I often fight between feeling I can’t be in this world of working to combat harm because it hurts too much – and feeling even worse when I’ve been away from it too long. I suppose I don’t have the opportunity of ‘ignorance is bliss’ anymore.
Any moment I’m not thinking or fighting feels wrong.
What Doesn’t Work (And Why It Makes It Worse)
All that time and energy spent being forced to stay small, be small. ‘Forget about it.’ ‘Just worry about your own life.’ ‘Be happy.. focus on you.. you don’t have what it takes.. leave it up to those who have it in their blood and won’t run, won’t burn out.’
Trying that, over and over, it does nothing. I feel worse. Worse in the anxiety and depression. But with the added restlessness which somehow can feel worse than the first two combined.
Not only is the world suffering, but I am too. More because I’m turning away. How is that right?
And I don’t care about the line of thought that it’s all the companies and billionaires doing this damage. There’s great truth in there, but it isn’t everything. That belief doesn’t address our individual feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. We are still left restless, anxious, depressed; now spending more energy with our heads in the sand, buying tomatoes in a plastic container.
Turning away doesn’t work. Trying to hide from it doesn’t work. Accepting that we’re too small and too weak to do something meaningful – it’s all wrong. And pointless.
What’s going to feel better to you: accepting while allowing the hurt to continue, or being scared, failing forward but still going forward, doing something that actually matters?
The Realization That Changes Everything
If I’m not actively and consistently working on what hurts me most, then I am worse off without it.
Suffering meets suffering. One type needs the other.
The only thing to do with our environmental anxiety is to go through it. Not around it, not over it, not by pretending it isn’t there. Through.
With years working to understand my sensitive nature alongside this gnawing ache to push beyond it, I’ve finally come to this: it is through my days that life must feel slow and simple. And it is through my work, my building of a life, that ought to feel big, bold, brave.
There is the problem of figuring out what I can do with my traits and what I need to do for wildlife in order to survive decently in my own life. Two ends of the spectrum. One calls for safety and calm. The other: tolerance, resilience, strength.
Sounds like everything that wildlife needs, doesn’t it?
The Weight of the Work (And Why We Do It Anyway)
Here’s what keeps me up at night, and what I’m learning to sit with:
Iain Douglas-Hamilton Never Felt Like It Was Enough
He passed away about a week ago. A zoologist, and founder of Save the Elephants. As I learned more about him, I discovered that he never thought he did enough in the world of conservation for elephants.
Here’s a man who dedicated his entire career to wildlife. Who chose to niche down to one species. An entire life. And he still felt it wasn’t enough.
If a conservationist felt this way, and I can imagine how many do, given the incomprehensible amount of suffering and problems to correct, then how was I ever going to feel fulfilled? I haven’t studied conservation, I don’t have a degree in it, and I don’t do this full time. I’m just one lady with a heap of traits I still too often fight and wish I didn’t have all so I can do more.
But here’s what I’m understanding now: I can’t attach myself to a goal. Just the act.
Just the day-to-day actions that truly do tame my anxiety and depression. Having some grand goal accomplished likely won’t bring me the feeling I crave, because there’s so much more to do for wildlife than any one thing I can accomplish. Still so much hurt out there.
What I’m chasing is fulfillment, not happiness. Happiness comes in moments and ought to be cherished. But fulfillment? That comes from the consistent act of doing something good. If we’re doing something good and feeling good.. well hey, that’s something worth continuing, yes?
The EU Fur Ban Took Ten Years
I was one of 250,000 people who answered a questionnaire and signed a petition that would go in front of parliament. A ten-year uphill battle finally came to a successful close and the second leading country to export fur will be closing their doors.
But it took 10 years and plenty more than 250,000 people to do it. And these fur farms have 8 years before they need to shut down. How many murders can happen over 8 years?
My point: it takes an incredible amount of trial and error, people, generations, changed minds (that being the biggest challenge) in order to make the kind of difference for wildlife that creates the momentum wildlife critically needs.
How devastating. And yet.. it happened.
Even Jane Goodall Had to Compromise
With all the immense good she has done for our wild cousins and the people she inspired, Jane Goodall went as far as a conservationist could ever hope for. And yet, we as humans still do animal testing on primates.
I recall her telling a story when she visited one of the facilities. She always tried to be the mediator, and she didn’t falter even in the middle of a testing lab while those she cared deeply for were stuck in cages, in pain, scared, angry. She tried to suggest other ways. And as a last resort, she asked if these animals could at least be in better living conditions while they were here.
Ever bending, and still. What has come of it for those individuals?
And yet.. she kept going. Up until her last days.
This is what I’m learning: the work is never finished, the suffering never fully resolved. But the act of engaging with it, of being a seed of change, that’s where we find our way through.
We Are the Seeds of Change
If we, you and me, are feeling helpless, wildlife will never be saved. It takes all of us. And it takes us individually doing what only we can do and be.
We need to be one among thousands, and we need to be our own Iain Douglas-Hamiltons.
It’s true, I believe it wholeheartedly, that there will be a time in the future when we live as equals with all who roam the planet, and they’ll look back on the actions of this modern age with horror. But they’ll see the seeds of change. Those who started it all. Carried the torch. Generations of it.
I want to be one of them. In my own way, my quieter way, my sensitive way that really couldn’t bear being on the front lines of suffering. But perhaps I am made for this. This way.
How to Actually Engage: Three Levels of Action
In order to keep my sanity in the midst of this world, I must participate in three levels. Not one. Not two. All three.
Level 1: Personal Action
Going zero-waste, minimal, vegan. Making my own lotions and potions. It’s my choice to say no to the plastic straw in my drink that saves a turtle in the sea. It’s my choice to turn away from the most beautiful hardwood flooring you’ve ever seen in your life, and to choose cork instead. (Just as beautiful if you give it a chance.)
I as an individual can save a tree. Which saves hundreds of wild animals, by the way. All those who call that tree Home.
My money, my minutes, my passion; all towards small choices in my life that work up into something grand.
Level 2: Communal Action
Helping those who are helping wildlife. Through donations, signing petitions, sharing others’ posts. Being one among 250,000 who changes policy. Being part of the ten-year fight.
Because we, you and me, as individuals, can help individual lives, their wellbeing, their children’s children.
Level 3: Your Grander Impact
One that’s all your own. A unique-to-you way of putting good into the world.
For me, that’s this: wildlifeel at home. Writing to you. Sometimes a freewrite like this. Other times it’s a well-researched topic offering you a better way to think about the dualities we face. Sometimes a newsletter.
Something that only I can do in this way. Because we all have something in us that another desperately needs.
So what’s yours?
Here’s What I Really Want to Say to You
You, with all of your quirks, you’re needed. Exactly as you are. With your troubles, your unfinished thoughts, your second-guesses, your heart.
If you have environmental anxiety too, there is something within you that needs to come out. To be expressed, to be of help, to be a part of the solution.
If you turn inward and really seek the core of a dream within you – it is bound to be helpful, useful, damn needed, in the world.
Do you know what it is yet?
If not, begin with a commitment to just start listening to yourself more. Your mind and body. Write that stuff down, jot down the notes. Come back later and find what connects them.
And if you do already know, I hope to Mother Nature that this post has helped free you to do something with it.
We need it.
Just chasing the act that keeps the bad at bay – that’s the path through environmental anxiety. I can’t live doing it any other way. It’s not living.
And if the wildlife could speak to us, I’m sure they’d all agree that if we are even a fraction as capable as we actually are, we have the immense power to be seeds of change. And we can help many lives in the process. Trees, songbirds and countless more.
Pick something that you can love for a lifetime, and care for it in every way you know how, with all emotions you can muster, because they each hold a strength for your chosen cause. Wear it as a badge you’re proud of. Teach others. Lead by example. Change minds, save lives.
Give our wild world a chance to believe good is coming.
