Facing Extinction

This is the closing portion of the essay “Facing Extinction” written by Catherine Ingram and first published in February 2019. It is shared here with her express permission. Please click here to read the entire essay.

LOVE

What else is there to do now?  Here we are, some of the last humans who will experience this beautiful planet since Homo sapiens began their journey some 200,000 years ago.  Now, in facing extinction of our species, you may wonder if there is any point in going on.  If your future projects make no sense any more, if you feel it is unwise to have children, and that things are going to get really hard and bad, you may not want to bother living any longer.  Yet, there are other ways to use your attention that make life still relevant and even beautiful. 

For nearly thirty years I have led public sessions and silent retreats around the world.  In those gatherings, I encourage people to manage their own attention by moving it into present awareness, gratitude, and an immersion in the senses.  However you are using your attention in any given moment is conditioning the experience you are having in that moment.  We live in a time when managing our attention will be all the more necessary to stay calm and to allow us to enjoy and be helpful in whatever time is left.  Directing attention is a facility that becomes habitual with time.  Left to its own conditioned patterns, our minds get into all kinds of trouble (unless one was very lucky in one’s conditioning, which is rare).  Developing the habit of re-directing your awareness when your mind is lost in fear or troubling stories induces confidence along the way.  Your attention starts to incline toward ease more frequently. You find that you can choose calm. You can choose gratitude.  You can choose love.

Jonathan Franzen, winner of the National Book Award and many other literary honors, writes in his latest book The End of the End of the Earth:  “Even in a world of dying, new loves continue to be born.”  This is now the time to give yourself over to what you love, perhaps in new and deeper ways. Your family and friends, your animal friends, the plants around you, even if that means just the little sprouts that push their way through the sidewalk in your city, the feeling of a breeze on your skin, the taste of food, the refreshment of water, or the thousands of little things that make up your world and which are your own unique treasures and pleasures.  Make your moments sparkle within the experience of your own senses, and direct your attention to anything that gladdens your heart. Live your bucket list now.

There are also some simple thought reflections and actions that might be helpful:

Find your community (or create one).  People are beginning to wake up and speak about this all over the world.  Extinction Rebellion, which began in the U.K., now has gatherings in many cities of Europe, North America, and Australia. There are also several online extinction-aware groups. You may want to start discussions in your own home with friends and neighbors. People have been thinking about these matters and discussing issues such as community gardens, water, and safety—and there is online information along those lines.  Here is a paper that addresses community resilience in the area in which I live. These ideas can be adapted to suit differing communities’ needs. Having community around you is important both for mental wellbeing and for what Jem Bendell covers in his online paper, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Strategy. Take a look also at Resilience.org and at Dahr Jamail’s columns on Truthout.org, where you will find dozens of climate articles and data. For those who prefer audio, friends Michael Shaw and Michelle Walter host a no-nonsense radio show in Australia called “This is the Climate Crisis.” There is also a private Facebook group called Near Term Extinction SUPPORT group, which is a treasure trove of current scientific articles and climate news as well as heartfelt explorations in bearing this news.

Find your calm. In addition to wisely directing your attention, include also whatever daily activities induce greater calm in your life–walking in nature, a slow meal with loved ones or on your own, reading or listening to music, dancing, swimming–whatever your thing is, give priority to it every day. Your relaxation and calm is not an indulgence but rather a tune up for your mental and physical wellbeing, which leads to a more awake and responsive intelligence. My podcast channel called “In the Deep with Catherine Ingram” (taken directly from the public sessions I lead) regularly encourages ways to foster courage, acceptance, and calm.

Release dark visions of the future, and pace your intake of climate news. Although frightening pictures about what is to come in the future may arise in your imagination, it is best not to entertain them. It is also helpful to pace yourself in reading or watching news of climate chaos. There is a tendency, once climate catastrophe grabs the attention, to keep staring at fresh news of it as though transfixed by a plane crash in real time. Resist being constantly immersed in the increasing data of the chaos. Have a fast from the news as needed, and rest your weary mind. One of my friends periodically unplugs and walks in mountains; another unplugs and works for hours in his garden. They are both keenly aware of unfolding climate realities, with the inevitable sadness that comes with that awareness. Yet both have learned to manage and enjoy the precious time that is left, living by a Navaho ethos: “May you walk in beauty.” 

Be of service. Know that whatever is to be in the future, it will feel good to be of service in whatever ways your gifts can be used and on any scale that feels right and true, whether in your personal life of family and friends or in a larger community.  There is no need to keep accounts of whether your actions will someday pay off.  Being of service feels good for its own sake and gives your life meaning, a sense that you are being well used, like good compost in the field of life.

Be grateful.  Longevity was never a guarantee for anyone at any time of history.  Whatever time is left to us, we are the lucky ones.  We got to experience life, despite the overwhelming odds of that not being the case, as biologist Richard Dawkins often points out.  When we think of all the times our ancestors had to thread the needle of survival and live long enough to procreate, every single lifetime, it puts into perspective how precious is this experience we are having. Gratitude for life itself becomes the appropriate response.  Direct your awareness many times throughout the day to all the little things for which you are grateful.  It is an open secret for inducing a calmer mind.

Give up the fight with evolution. It wins.  The story about a human misstep in history, the imaginary point at which we could have taken a different route, is a pointless mental exercise. Our evolution is based on quintillions of earth motions, incremental biological adaptations, survival necessities, and human desires. We are right where we were headed all along.

Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art.  We cry in tenderness when we are touched by love, beauty, or loss.  We cry in empathy for others’ pain.  Some of us even sacrifice our lives for strangers.  There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own. 

You likely know well the spectrum of human consciousness within yourself.  Perhaps you have had many moments when greed or hatred overtook your mind.  But it is likely you have also had many moments when you knew that love was all that ever really mattered.  And in your final breaths it is likely to be all that is left of you, a cosmic story whispered only once.

As Leonard said, “It is in love that we are made; in love we disappear.”

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*This essay was originally posted at www.catherineingram.com and a portion is shared here with her express permission. Please click here to read the entire essay.