Our Own Small Corners of the World

20 degrees. Above zero!

About 9,10, maybe even 11 years ago, we had a friend who got us real worried about the impending collapse of pretty much everything. His main concern was peak oil, followed in short order by the demise of the dollar, and not long after that, by the global warming-related havoc that was (is?) sure to come. I think there was also something in there about marauding Manhattanites.

I gotta be honest: He really had us fretting. Ok, well, so he really had me fretting; for the most part, Penny maintained her enviable equanimity. She’s just not one to relinquish her emotional well being to forces beyond her control, though it’s possible she got just a little nervous when the 2008 recession hit and oil went to $140/barrel and our friend, who’d invested heavily in gold way back when it was something like $300/ounce, was suddenly sitting on a whole lot of virtual dough and look real freakin’ smart. Meanwhile, we did the exact wrong thing, which was to flip out and convert our already-meager retirement savings to cash at very nearly the bottom of the market. (Actually, I’m no longer convinced this was the wrong thing to do, given the rapacious work of the corporations funded by our so-called investments. But still. Strictly from a financial perspective, it was a bone-headed move, albeit not without its compensations, since we now have so little in those accounts, we needn’t worry about what to do with it)

Anyhow. I digress. Our friend did many things to prepare for collapse. He got solar panels. He got cows. Bees. Planted lots of gardens. Built a real nice barn. I’m not sure what else, but it was a lot. He had some resources – not limitless, but not inconsequential, either – and then there was all that gold, which had quadrupled in value since he’d bought in.

We just sort of kept plugging along, doing what we’d been doing for the past dozen years or so. But I gotta tell you, I was pretty tweaked. This was well before the recession, by the way, back in the mid-2000’s, when the real estate market was still on a tear, and, from the perspective of the growth economy, everything was still coming up roses. But thanks to the wise counsel of our friend, I could see the truth: Everything was well and truly fucked. The ship was sinking, and only the strongest would survive. There simply wasn’t enough of anything – oil, money, water, food, fertilizer – for everyone.

Not surprisingly, my view of everything being in decline had a profound impact on how I perceived my surroundings; the more worried I became, the more I saw everything through the prism of scarcity, and the stingier I felt. I started having hoarding fantasies: Fuel, salt, batteries, chainsaw parts, ammo, Spinal Tap DVDs, basically anything I thought we couldn’t live without once the trucks stopped running and the real suffering set in. In hindsight, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we didn’t have the money to actually carry out any of this tomfoolery (ok, so I did buy a big bag of salt, which we’re still using).

So what happened? I can’t really say. I guess at some point I just realized that I was becoming captive to my expectation of collapse, and in that regard, I was actually collapsing myself. I don’t mean that literally. Or maybe I do. Because I think that once you begin to embody your feelings and perceptions of the world around you, you become those feelings and perceptions, and those feelings and perceptions in turn begin to influence the world around you. I think that’s what’s commonly referred to as a “vicious cycle.” I guess what I’m saying is the same thing I said a while back: The feelings we bring to the world are the feelings the world brings to us. Because when you think about it, what, really, is the difference between “us” and “the world”?

Will our economy collapse? Maybe. Probably. Will the waters of the Atlantic someday flow down Wall Street? Could be. Will I someday wish I’d figured out a way to fill our basement with sea salt and that super-soft quilted toilet paper I’m partial to? Perhaps. Really, who the hell knows. Certainly, I don’t know. What I do know is that my emotional well-being is immeasurably better than it was a decade ago, at the height of my fretting. What I also know is that to live as we live for any other reasons than the simple pleasures of good food, honest work, the relationships it fosters, and the appreciation of this imperfect world’s amazing, almost infinite generosity would allow us to experience only a fraction of the joy this life has to offer.

And our friend? The cows are gone. The bees are gone. The solar panels are still there, but last time I saw them, they were buried under a thick blanket of snow. He’s still got the barn, of course, but the gardens have pretty much gone by the wayside. I haven’t talked to him in a while, so I don’t know if he still worries about collapse or not. Probably he does. I mean, in some ways, you’d sort of have to be crazy not to, right? The writing’s all over the wall.

But here’s the thing. I think that when you begin to embody an understanding that the way you think, act, and perceive the world is a reflection of the world you wish to inhabit, you erase just a little bit of that writing. When you stop viewing yourself as being separate from your surroundings, from the people and the plants and the animals, you erase just a little bit of that writing.

This doesn’t mean we can magically wish away all the tragedy in this world and all the forces underlying all the collapse scenarios I used to worry about. That doesn’t mean we should stop protesting the myriad injustices against people and planet; I’m not saying it’s all good, man, party on. It just means it’s worth pausing a moment to recognize and acknowledge the role our own thoughts and emotions play in feeding these tragedies and injustices. Not directly, of course (or at least, hopefully not), but from a distance, filtered through the prism of our own small lives, in our own small corners of the world.