I remember talking to a Buddhist once about my despair at
the way we humans are treating the planet - plastic waste, endless short
journeys by car and the like – and she consoled me with a perspective from
Buddhism that we must allow nature to run its course: if the earth needs to
destroy itself in order to start again and rejuvenate, then so be it. The universe
as we know it stands as just a speck in time against backdrop of forever. In the
grand scheme of things, it is nothing. All will be well.
Indeed, all it takes is a perusal of the opening chapter of
Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly
Everything to discover how tiny and insignificant the size and lifespan of
our planet (let alone ourselves) is when stacked up against infinity and
eternity. And indeed I found a certain comfort in adopting the perspective that,
however messed up the world becomes during my lifetime, it won’t always be that
way.
However, I’ve continued to experience increasing dismay at the
state of affairs: extortionate prices to travel sustainably on public
transport; having to visit 2-3 stores for the weekly shop to get both value and
minimal packaging; an ongoing obsession and preoccupation with (sole-occupncy) car use… Whilst heartened by conscious
living (tackling plastic waste in particular) becoming ever more present in the
public psyche, I can’t help but feel it’s too little too late.
Enter global pandemic. For all the chaos and heartache
caused by the current state of affairs, a common theme in our collective coping
mechanisms seems to be 'finding the positives'. From the appearance of Facebook
pages dedicated to acts of kindness, to reports of wildlife returning to
previously-too-polluted places, the world really is embracing the happy by-products
of a challenging situation. On a more individual level, I think we’re all
counting our blessings and finding heightened appreciation of life’s small
pleasures.
As the pandemic unfolds and its more favourable consequences
transpire, I become increasingly convinced that nature really does know what it’s
doing with this one. Yes, it will be hideous. Lots of people will die; everyone
will suffer in some way or another; some countries, areas & groups will be
hit particularly hard. But inevitably, we will come out of the other side
changed. By ‘we’ I mean as individuals, societies and as a whole world. Perhaps
this was just the catalyst to accelerate some cultural changes that were sorely
needed. I like to use the term “societal recalibration” to describe this. To explain
further, allow me to present some examples of things that deeply trouble me
about modern (British) life and how the present situation contributes to
putting them right.
Travel & environment:
I’ve already hinted at my level of dismay about the tendency
to get in our cars and drive everywhere, often with only one person per vehicle
(I use ‘our’ in the widest sense to reflect the nation as opposed to a group that
specifically includes me!). Added to that, the financial and practical ease
with which we can hop on and off planes like there’s no tomorrow is deeply
disturbing when you consider the environmental consequences of this. I heard
that one person flying from London to New York is the equivalent, in carbon
emission terms, of the average individual’s car use for a whole year. A WHOLE
YEAR! Multiply that by the number of people on that flight and the number of
flights taking off daily, and the scale of the problem becomes incomputable to
the human brain.
The good news is that this tragic circumstance is being
partially reversed by the current lockdown on movement & travel. Stories of
swans returning to the canals in Venice, for instance, illustrates the substantial
impact that just a few weeks of changed behaviour can have. Now of course, the
current limitation on transport can’t be maintained, but if each one of us were
more thoughtful in our choices in the long-term – a short journey by bike here,
a local weekend away instead of jet-setting to wherever is cheapest there –
imagine the impact we could have on saving the planet. Immense.
Health & lifestyle:
90% of people in the UK are
putting their health at risk by either smoking, having a poor diet, not being
active enough or drinking too much. Some 70% have at least 2 of those risk
factors, and over two-thirds of the population is overweight. Alcohol consumption
is glamorised to the extent that even the most reserved of ‘normal’ social
drinkers are often well-over the threshold of the increased-risk-to-health
category. The advent of processed foods, motor vehicles, cheap booze, ‘smart’ technology
that enables us to do anything & everything without leaving our sofas, and
a whole host of other cultural and technological changes, are essentially slowly
killing us. Usually the easy thing to do is the unhealthy one, and we’re in a terrible
state because of it.
Enter a semi-lockdown state though
and all of a sudden the population of joggers and walkers has quadrupled in my
local area. As an aside, I’m proud of the UK Government (and I don’t think I’ve
ever said that before!) for taking such a balanced public health approach to
all this and continuing to encourage people to get out and exercise whilst
maintaining social distancing and sheltering in place the rest of the time. Since
this is one of the very few legitimate reasons for leaving the house, it seems
that people who you couldn’t usually get to exercise if you paid them have
realised that getting out and moving isn’t so bad after all. Others still are
adopting home-workout routines they’d never normally have thought to do, in a
bid to not go stir-crazy with all that time in the house. It seems that this
phase has enabled many people to discover all the wellbeing benefits of
exercise, and I hope this will help instil some long-term healthy changes and
improved population wellbeing.
Sense of community:
It breaks my heart to think that
we have almost no sense of community these days. People don’t know their
neighbours; we rush around cities refusing to make eye contact with each other;
many of us don’t know who we’d turn to in our local area if we needed help. It’s
becoming increasingly apparent that social isolation (and its direct &
indirect effects) is a bigger killer than any of the lifestyle factors
mentioned above, with the scale and severity of the situation described in detail
by an excellent report
by the Eden Project.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the way
people have pulled together during this time has been astounding. The NHS made
a call for volunteers this week hoping to get 250 thousand sign-ups over the
course of a few days. In less than 24 hours, 405 thousand people had registered
their interest. Similarly in my local area, I’ve signed up to be part of a
co-ordinated ‘community response’ to the crisis; I’ve not been offered any work
yet as they’ve been so inundated with volunteers that it’s taking days & days to
simply collate the details and work out who can do what. On a smaller scale, I
went for a run this morning and was amazed how every single person I passed –
from a distance of course! – offered a smile, wave, nod or ‘hello’. (It’s not
rare for this to happen normally, but you don’t usually find that every person
you cross will interact with you!) I am hopeful that whenever we return to
some kind of normal, an enhanced sense of community will remain as a legacy to
these times.
Pace of life:
Perhaps the thing I struggle most with in daily life is time
pressure: what with work, socialising, fitness, maintaining a healthy lifestyle
and general life-admin (lifemin!), there never seems enough time to get everything done
(and this is coming from someone who in ‘normal’ life is largely absent from social
media and rarely works more than her allotted 37 hours per week!). British life
seems to have become something of a competition about who can be busiest all
the time. Our diaries are so crammed you have to do things like plan dinner
with a friend several months in advance, or block out time specifically to do
nothing. My best friend, a Brit who lives in Italy where people simply take
life as it comes, finds this particularly baffling. And she’s right; it’s stressful
and encroaches on our ability to live spontaneously and simply enjoy the moment
or see where the wind takes us. I often find myself grappling with the desire
to ‘make the most of life’ versus a hankering for a simpler way of being, and
wish I could find the ideal balance between the two.
As my mum said of our current situation, “I think it’s
nature’s way of getting us all to slow down”. Having time to reflect, take
stock, reconnect with ourselves and simply relax could do us all the world of
good. We’ll find more time for things that usually go on the backburner, like
reading, crafts and catching up with loved ones. We’ll realise we don’t need to be rushing around like headless
chickens all the time, and that joy can be found in the simplest of pursuits. We
may even find that a simpler life has healing qualities beyond that any type of
therapy or medication could ever bring. I saw a quote on social media this
weekend that nicely summed it up: Before rushing back to normal life, take time
to consider which parts of it are worth rushing back to.
So there you have it, the bright side of what is in many
ways a very dark period. If the world needs to dismantle itself temporarily in
order to repair, our sacrifices will be worth making.
Note: if you’re curious about the title of this post, I
committed when I started this blog that the vast majority of posts would be
named from a song title or lyric. Dismantle.Repair
is a song by a favourite band of mine and my brothers, Anberlin. Whilst the song
itself isn’t particularly pertinent to the theme of the piece, I felt the title
was rather apt and summed up the overarching point I was making rather nicely.
