This One Wild and Precious Life Quotes

“It’s a gorgeous oddity of our existence – our loneliness is not caused by being on our own. Indeed, loneliness is best cured with aloneness, which is to say, a meaningful connection to ourselves.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Awe is quite a specific experience. It happens when we view beauty amid vastness, predominantly in nature, triggering a deep sense of belonging. Our smallness against a backdrop of immensity reminds us of our insignificance and interconnectedness, which brings about a profound, yet elated, peace.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“It’s a gorgeous oddity of our existence – our loneliness is not caused by being on our own. Indeed, loneliness is best cured with aloneness, which is to say, a meaningful connection to ourselves. Moral loneliness is when the supply cord to connection, caring and doing the right thing by each other and the planet has been severed. We can’t tap into the point of life, to what matters. When you don’t know your true north, the disorientation is terrifying. You are suspended in a vague and directionless vastness.

The Greeks argued that this kind of moral loneliness led to acedia – a state of spiritual apathy or listless sloth. The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas described it as “the sorrow of the world”, this moral “asleepness.” As I ventured into the early stages of this journey, I quickly realized it was at the root of our disconnect from this one wild and precious life we’d been granted. And that we’d be revisiting it many times over. It’s an evolutionary response to shut down and go numb like this. When we can’t fight or flee from a horrible threat, we lie down and play dead – we freeze.

Of course, freezing or numbing out can work as a survival trick for a while, but if we remain asleep, particularly as a society, we face our collective demise.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Irish poet David Whyte, pausing after a complex thought, or a hoary quandary, looking out to the room of devotees who flock to his workshops around the world, and asking, “But what is the more beautiful question?” And we are immediately reminded that there is always a more beautiful question that should be asked. I’ve heard David explain that asking the more beautiful question (invariably the courageous one) delivers us the answer we seek.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Wrestling with the darkness has left me more committed to this path than I could ever have imagined. And with one last beautiful question that guides me in my most personal moments: “What is left if we might lose it all?” My answer gets more beautiful by the hour: nature, humanity, and my wildly alive love of it all.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Every topic gets to unfurl completely, never forced or rushed. Sometimes I like to sit back in the group and observe the magic of The Group Hiking Conversation. No matter what the mix of ages, sex or backgrounds, everyone in a walking conversation eventually arrives together in the one lovely pool of mutualism. Or perhaps a field, the one beyond right and wrong, is a better metaphor. It generally only takes about an hour or so. But after that initial hour you do adjust to the primitive rhythm, like you’re dialed into our ancestral way of keeping company and bearing mindful witness to each other. It feels like home. A day of walking will dislodge all kinds of deep truths. They will surface through the fatigue as you sink into the couch; after a day of walking off our barky layers, we reveal the trauma rings in our trunks”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“One report found that smoking fifteen cigarettes a day is a healthier option than living on your own, a state of being sociologist Hugh Mackay calls the “global warming” of demographics. But then we learn that 60 percent of married people feel lonely. Seemingly we are all lonely, regardless of the number of up-close humans in our lives.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“We're avoiding the potentially ugly, confronting image in the proverbial mirror that another human always holds up to us when we interact face-to-face or show up emotionally. We're avoiding being vulnerable. We don't like the mirror; exposing our vulnerability is terrifying. But it's precisely this reflection in the other, and in the world, that has always tamed our worst impulses and held us accountable. An offended look on a friend's face makes us recognise our insensitivity. A smile can encourage our commitment to making changes within ourselves. Calling someone back when an issue is in our court, and apologising or front-footing things, sees us rise to our better selves. That's how we grow and become kinder humans.”
― Sarah Wilson , This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“As Anne Frank once wrote, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“As Nietzsche said, when we have a why we can handle any how.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“Sister Joan explained that this can mean having to shut down everything that has previously formed you, if required. To be a prophet is not self-serving and often means working in isolation with little recognition. “You’re an agitator in a time of complacency.” You do what has to be done precisely because no one else is doing it.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“You could say we’ve been in a maintenance phase for decades, if not centuries. But now things have gotten destructive, as they have before, and we need to step up from our comfortable lull – our acedia – go to our edge and serve.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“When we feel disconnected and undernourished, we can often fall into the trap of distancing ourselves further by hating on the nearest person living “lite” in one form or another (pretending, avoiding, sending wink emoticons). I do it myself. I know a lot of us do as we grapple with the fragmentation going on around us. But I now use my judgy rage as a trigger to get me to come in closer. It goes like this: I feel the hot rage and judgment. Then I stop and I look at the people. I might see their pain, their lostness straight away. Sometimes I imagine them as a little child of seven so I can best see their vulnerability. My anger subsides and I feel compassion in its place. I try to look into their eyes if they allow me. I make sure I’m smiling when I do. I do this at train stations, when I’m bustling down streets; I do it when I’m confronted by others who don’t share my political values or scientific views, a situation that is increasingly causing division among us all. The technique never fails to connect me into our shared humanity. I soften. They soften. Next, and for extra sturdy effect, I say to myself, “I get you.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“I want to make this point, though, and might also come back to it a few times. It’s an evolutionary response to shut down and go numb like this. When we can’t fight or flee from a horrible threat, we lie down and play dead – we freeze. A deer will do it as a last-ditch survival trick when being chased by a tiger. Playing dead might fool their predator into being a bit casual in their final lunge, giving the deer an opportunity to suddenly jerk back to life and escape. Abuse victims do it as a form of self-protection; anxiety sufferers do it in the face of too many decisions and existential overwhelm. And I reckon it’s what we do to survive when we find ourselves living a life that is so removed from the miraculous. Which is useful to reflect on; it certainly makes me more compassionate about things when I do. Of course, freezing or numbing out can work as a survival trick for a while, but if we remain asleep, particularly as a society, we face our collective demise.”
― Sarah Wilson, Reveries of a Solitary Walker

“Play with “and.” We can contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said. Play with being spiritual and political, peaceful and outraged, calm and alarmed. This is definitely what our hyperobjectified life is demanding of us.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“As I scan my social feeds, I unfollow the voices that preach the consuming, inward focused ways of the false gods. To apply the Kondo Method, if their gospel doesn’t bring life-saving joy I stop being a sheep to their shepherding. Instead, I follow the prophets whose voices bring me the difficult messages and who put care and soul into sharing their words. Care-full wording is a sign of a prophet committed to connecting. I trust the influencers who are brave enough to sacrifice pride and ownership. I bow to those who throw bombs under the situation and light up debate when it’s required. Because disruption connects, too.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“I’d journeyed from feeling lonely and fearful to ashamed (of myself) and angry (at everyone else) for not caring enough. But I saw now that the issue was systemic. And that we were, in fact, all in the system together. Which meant I actually had a chance in hell of not shutting down – going acedic – right when the world needs us fully alive. And it allowed me to ask myself, and all of us here, the more beautiful question, “Are we finally ready to do this differently, to imagine, create and become beyond the system that is destroying us?”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Capitalism is a cult. We’ve become so ensconced in it, however, so blind to its power, that it’s hard to see it as such. Which is how a cult is imposed on people. I mean, we can’t fathom that there could be any other way of existing and we defend it even when we can see it is no longer working for us.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“It has been said that what we face with this climate crisis is harder than winning World War II, achieving civil rights, defeating bacterial infection and sending a man to the moon . . . combined. So let’s get super duper clear, my dear friends: this is a human despair crisis.

Rebecca Solnit: “The scale is not like anything human beings have faced and journalists have reported on, except perhaps the threat of all-out nuclear war.” She then added the whopper caveat that nuclear war was something that “might happen, not something that is happening.” I add this: with nuclear war, we all agreed the threat was real and we talked about it openly. We weren’t fighting the science on it.

Sure, we’ve had climate change before. And, yep, the planet survived. But this is not the point. No doubt the planet will survive again. There’s just one small problem that we get distracted from. This time, we probably won’t. Or at least, our lives as we know and love them won’t….Scientists and activists have no vested interest in making this shit up. There is no money to be made and no power to be gained from spreading information about the worth of sustainable energy, or consuming less. I said this to someone who challenged me at a dinner party as to my motives behind engaging in climate activism: “We would much rather be at the beach.” Fair point, they replied.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“For me, this memory of the miraculous is a knowingness that life is big and meaningful and precious and that everything is awesomely, unfathomably, satiatingly connected. We share 60 percent of our DNA with a banana. The first living cell emerged four billion years ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. We are literally breathing molecules right now inhaled by Buddha, Marie Curie and Beyoncé. We die and decompose and replace ourselves – every cell – every seven years. We are the Earth. We are space. Our fates are inseparable. You pull the cuticle on my little finger, and you can move my entire lumpen frame. The spiritualists teach us this, but we know it viscerally, too.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“When we ask, “How are you?” we are generally met with the equally flat “Not too bad.” The whole thing becomes a go-nowhere “connection-lite” interaction. If I reached out and asked you right now, “How is the state of your heart, in this breath?” I’m already connected to you.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“We can be in grief, we can itch, we can be overwhelmed, and we can choose to do something about it. We don’t have to be rendered numb, asleep, despairing. I learned some time back that I could be fretting with anxiety and I could choose to live a great life.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“The times are demanding more of us right now. There are periods in history in which this happens. The Vedic tradition teaches that life works to a never-ending cycle of creation, maintenance and destruction. We’re born, we live, we die, then we are reborn in some form or other, and on we go. Physics, biology, quantum mechanics . . . they work to the same truth. You could say we’ve been in a maintenance phase for decades, if not centuries. But now things have gotten destructive, as they have before, and we need to step up from our comfortable lull – our acedia – go to our edge and serve. It’s in such times (of war, famine, plague, despotic rule) that religion and spirituality tend to lead us in this stepping up, reminding us of the noble worth of the hard bits – the sacrifice, the service, the radical faith. The beautiful questions to ask, then: How are we going to be of service? What are we willing to sacrifice to live the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Gaia, The Universe – to save ourselves, and the world?”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“For me, when I read deep, I am immediately reconnected with a shared knowingness – in a group soul kind of way. To see that what you’ve been feeling has had words put to it triggers a sense of congruence. Also, to see that an artist has turned your perplexing pain into a thing of beauty . . . well, that can see me air-punch in celebration. I also love that deep reading improves us at a biological level.

Neuroscience shows that when we learned to read 6,000 years ago, particular circuits were formed. These circuits sparked vital processes, such as internalized knowledge (which I take to mean “knowingness”), fair reasoning, the ability to be empathetic and to have insight.

As one of the researchers noted, our inability to deep read is seeing us fail to “grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of [our] own.” Studies show young people now struggle to be able to read university texts, as well as life-affecting contracts and information relating to their political responsibilities (um, Brexit!). In essence, skimming has made us sleepy, with all the now-familiar repercussions. As one researcher put it, “It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and demagoguery.”

Reading deep articles and nonfiction, as well as good literature, cultivates focus and reprograms our neurons. The stillness and time required for a long read (anything over 3,000 words) also allows our minds to formulate our moral position. This is like building a muscle.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Evolutionary psychologist Jeremy Sherman explains that there are two “standard” ways in our culture to connect to the spiritual essence of things. There’s Western religion and there’s the Eastern traditions that we have turned to more recently. But he writes of a “third way” to connect. He calls it soul nerding. Soul nerding is about studying our predicament with considered curiosity by “absorbing evolutionary biology, intellectual history, philosophy, anthropology, and above all, literature.” I’d add poetry and art to this list, as well as music, particularly classical. Voltaire called it “cultivating our garden.” It’s the connection we feel in the stillness and attention required to appreciate a creative expression by a fellow human.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“I didn’t grow up literary and cultured. I used to do speed art – dashing through a gallery between the blockbuster pieces, in a bucket-list way. And when lines of poetry were quoted in a book, I’d skip over them. But it was actually while researching this book and wading curiously into dense essays and texts, following a thread and then applying myself mindfully to big, wise words and expressions which had to be understood with the heart, that I got a feel for how the considered study of life could also dial me directly back into life.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“I kept putting one foot in front of the other, drawing up energy from the earth through my feet, breathing in air that creates a cool, vibrant rhythm inside me until it becomes trance-like. Mountains take you to this point very effectively.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“Fractals! It’s about fractals! Nature’s patterns – tidal pools, rings in trunks, flower petal formations – are organized as complex configurations, each part of which has the same statistical characteristic as the whole. The human retina also moves in a fractal pattern while taking in a view. This congruence, then, creates alpha waves in the brain, which is the neural resonance of relaxation. In other less technical words, looking at natural phenomena makes us feel like we’re part of it, part of the natural order. You know, that we belong.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“We emerged into human-hood walking in nature. Our human brain evolved because we got upright and walked. Our sentience and awareness – the stunning and special stuff that sets us apart in the animal kingdom – evolved to the rhythms of walking and in response to the patterns in nature we saw when we quit schlepping around on all fours and began looking upward. Hiking brings us back to our nature because hiking is how we know our nature.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World

“What a wonderful concept, to be with a mountain. I do think this is how I’ve come to relate to mountains. I allow them to hold me, to show me. I sit with them and gaze out to valleys with them. The book is a poetic meditation in returning to our senses via the mountain, and “living all the way through” to ourselves. Nan Shepherd in The Living Mountain had scary moments – almost falling down a ravine, almost treading on an adder – that shocked her into a “heightened power” of herself. Fear became something that “enlarged rather than constricted the spirit.” “When walking for many hours on a mountain,” she wrote, “the body deepens into a fulfilled trance, the senses keyed,” and she discovers “most nearly what is it to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain.” Oh, yes, the knowingness of the mountain. I know such a knowingness.”
― Sarah Wilson, This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World