The struggle to reconnect
[Music]
are you an activist
i remember the first time i was
introduced as an activist it took me
aback a little bit i thought
am i an activist but when i searched the
dictionaries for
meaning of the word i found one that
suited me so i’m wearing it
and this is it an activist
is an active vigorous advocate
for change and i am an
active and generally vigorous
advocate for action on climate change
i’m passionate about it is there
something
you’re passionate about
something some way that you want the
world to be better and you’re actively
working for it
if so in my book you’re an activist too
and welcome to the club the thing about
all that activity and all that vigor
is that it takes a lot of energy
this year 2020 has been a very
energy draining year am i right
i mean we started off looking for masks
to protect
ourselves from toxic bushfire smoke and
then two or three months later
we were looking for mass to protect
ourselves and others from the
coronavirus
at times i found it overwhelming
and that affected my ability to be
vigorous
and active for what i was passionate
about
but i learned something in 2020
and i’m going to talk about that today
in the hopes that maybe
it might help you too
and to tell part of my story we’re going
to have to go back
in time so i want you to go
back to roundabout
new year’s day 2020.
even before i get out of bed
i am doom-scrolling through all the bad
news
on the internet i
reload the fires near me app
about every 10 minutes
and watch that grim progress
of the fires across southeast australia
the firefighters are exhausted
and many of them don’t have proper
protection equipment
some of them die
millions of hectares are burning
billions of animals are perishing
and i’m totally helpless
to do anything about it
the smoke is now inside my house for
days
my mind’s eye
replays that image of australians
trapped by the blazes right up against
the ocean
between the ocean and an orange sky
and it’s not clear who will help them
i have a friend from the coast
she’s evacuating first from one center
then to another
finally she comes to canberra to spend
one quick night with me
one quick night because even in canberra
the nation’s capital
she didn’t feel safe and she fled
again
and then i fell off the deck and broke
my leg
and as i was practicing getting to the
car
with my wheelchair and my go bag
in case i had to evacuate i thought
about
what about all those people with
permanent disabilities
who’s helping them with their evacuation
plans
now through this time i’m still working
but then kovid hit
and it slowed the work dramatically as
well as raising new struggles
struggles that now i and you
had to face in physical isolation so for
me
it was just me and my sturdy
welsh terrier
i received news from the united states
that my sister and her husband had
contracted
kovid 19 and i
am half a globe away from them
totally unable to assist in any way
and throughout all of it twitter
twitter is full of dangerous rhetoric
tearing my birth country apart into blue
states and red
states and racial hatred
is running down the streets
i collapsed
my body made the decision for me
for many days i didn’t get out of bed
i was in mourning
mourning is a form of connection
in fact you can’t mourn unless you’re
deeply connected to something something
you care
very very much about and you’ve lost
and what i needed to do was mourn
mourn for what had been lost in black
summer
some of it perhaps permanently
the psychologists have a name for it
they call it radical acceptance
which is a reconnection
to what’s real in the past
and in the present and that’s what i
needed to do i needed to
radically accept where we were
then where i was then because in order
to get where i want to go
i have to start from where i am
it’s the only way to get there
now as the fires gradually became more
and more extinguished
i found i could start again an activity
that i love doing which is going out in
nature
with my sturdy welsh terrier
and like all dogs she spends her time
in the moment
the sounds the sights and for her
especially the smells
and walking with her i began to do the
same i began to pay
attention to the little things in the
here and now
the things that gave me pleasure on the
small scale
day to day the things that were very
familiar to me
walking in nature does that for me for
you it might be different maybe
maybe listening to music or or doing
some sport
something that demands your attention
right now centers you
grounds you if i don’t
center myself i’ll be like
a lopsided piece of clay on the potter’s
wheel
and as it begins to spin and the
pressure builds i find myself
wobbling and wobbling
and centering is always the beginning of
a good pot
my teacher told me and centering
is connection to yourself reconnection
to yourself so that was my second step
in this cycle of reconnection that i
found myself on
and as i became more self-aware i asked
myself
why did your energy drain
and one reason i found is because
i was trying to do things that were not
directly related to my passion or my
expertise
they were things i cared about very
deeply
but they were things that took more
energy from me than i could give
and so i found them draining
if in order to make room make space
for my own passion i had to declutter
and so what that meant for me was that
some requests that came in through
email were declined and i simplified my
calendar
and i’m committed to myself
that i was going to spend my energy
where my passion was
and so that led me to the third step
which i call decluttering and this is
also reconnecting it’s reconnecting to
your passion
reconnecting with focus to your cause
now it happens that i have a little
voice a little internal voice that only
i can hear
um that i call unhelpful guilt
and unhelpful guilt was whispering to me
in my ear saying oh
you could do more you could do more
penny
you should do more i mean there’s so
many ways that the world could be better
so
many things you could be working on and
indeed there are
indeed there are it could be
overwhelming
again a sort of
realization came to me
that all of these things all of your
passions my passions
all of the ills and the struggles of the
world
are likely rooted in this same
false belief
the false belief that we are separate
that we are apart from what is just
outside just outside
us ourselves just outside our
culture our country
or outside our own species
climate change for example
is caused by the false belief that what
we do
our actions are disconnected separate
from the earth’s biophysical and
chemical
systems that control the climate
prejudice
is based on the false belief that
somehow
we are separate from people that look
different than we do or have
speak a different language despite the
fact that our histories
have intertwined and we are
interdependent on one another
despite the fact that frankly our dna is
the same
and extreme wealth disparity
thrives on the false belief
that the extreme wealth of few
is separate from disconnected from
the labor and the sacrifices of many
now if this is true
and if all those struggles and all those
ills are somehow rooted in this false
belief of disconnection
then we can heal by radically accepting
that we’re connected and every little
reconnection
anywhere starts to heal in a
small way the whole and what that means
is
that i don’t have to work on every
struggle
that i could think of because some of
you
are doing that for me and you
can count on me to be passionately
advocating for action on climate change
that’s what i’ll be doing
so this cycle
of reconnection
i call it a cycle because if my
experience is any guide you may find
yourself
traveling this more than once i’m not
standing here
talking to you because i’m good at this
i’m not standing here because i’ve found
the enlightenment
i’m standing here because i have been
through this cycle more than once
many times but each time i find myself
just a little bit stronger than i was
the time before
because of my previous experience i now
know that i need to take time to grieve
when i need to grieve
to radically accept something that i may
not want to believe is true but in my
heart i know it is
and i now know that even in times of
isolation
i can do valuable work by centering
myself
which is probably my most valuable asset
and i’ve seen how my work can be more
effective when i declutter
i can see that i know it has power i
know that’s something i need to do
and opening out becomes easier and
easier
each time i go through the cycle each
time i connect with
others trusting their work seeing how my
work
can build on theirs and theirs can build
on mine
opening out is the fourth stage
of reconnection it’s when you realize
that your work is connected to others
so when i realized that climate change
is connected to environmental
destruction it
is connected to the plight of refugees
that makes me more determined more
energetic
it makes me realize the value of my work
and when i reach out to other activists
i can learn from them
i can learn how climate action can help
create fairer work and pay for everyone
how can help those that are the most
vulnerable
how it can use and respect the knowledge
of first nation peoples my struggle
is connected to all those struggles
opening out is about reconnecting
with the whole now
if you found that there were times
during this year when
your energy was draining and maybe
you felt the weight on your shoulders
was just a little bit
more than you could bear
then i invite you now to just take a
moment
and think about where you might sit at
this moment
on that cycle of reconnection
you know as
wicked and horrendous as the effects of
covet 19 have been
that it has been a vivid reminder to us
that each of our lives is intimately
interconnected with every other life
on the planet now that interconnectivity
might
make the virus spread faster
but it can also make ideas spread faster
and so what i’d like to do is leave you
with this
idea to take with you
and use in your activism or in your life
as you see fit and the idea
is this
reconnecting is the very best thing
that an activist an activist like me can
do
the best thing for me the best thing for
my cause
and the best thing for all the causes
and
all the struggles of the world
why because in fact
they’re all the same struggle
the same struggle to reconnect
and connection makes us stronger
you