Not a fight, not a challenge, but a journey
This was originally posted in The Climate Optimist weekly newsletter.
I’m all about shifting narratives. And a big one that needs shifting is how we think about the work we’re here to do for climate change.
In fact, I struggle with how to address it. It’s not a fight, because climate change is not a battle to be won. It’s not a competition, because all of us (people, countries, and companies alike) need to come together and collaborate. I also don’t love to call it “work” because that indicates it’s something we “have to do.” Or at least for most of us, “work” doesn’t always spark the most exciting reactions in our brains.
And the truth is, we have to get excited about climate change.
To think of the climate crisis and our way out of it as a challenge we’re facing starts feeling better to me. A challenge is something we can get excited about, a challenge is something we can join forces to overcome, but it still misses the fact that a big chunk of this… (work/transition/transformation?) will happen in the interim when we think no change is being made at all. It’s in our daily lives, in our thoughts and spirits, and in our hearts. It’s in how we’re shifting perceptions and slowly breaking old molds to let new realities unfold. It’s a transformation that is in fact ongoing already and that will continue to progress outside of UN meetings and corporate boardrooms. It’s something bigger than the fights, work, and challenges combined.
It’s a journey.
When I started to see this work as a journey, everything shifted for me. It allowed me to gain a whole new perspective on the things that need to happen and also on my participation and what I can do.
On a journey, you learn and evolve. On a journey, you allow for things to unfold as they should. And on a journey, you understand that if you’ve never traveled this path before, you need to embark with curiosity and an open heart. If you don’t, it’ll be hard to take in all the new and most importantly — to let that “new” become part of your journey, to your story.
Since you’re reading this newsletter I take it that you’re well aware that a lot about this “old world” needs to go. But that also means that we have to find the courage to embrace new visions, ideas, and ways of life. And the only way to grow and muster that courage, in my opinion, is by embarking on a journey.
On a journey, you:
Accept that you don’t have everything figured out yet
Are willing to learn from experience and seek information from people and places you don’t know
Remain curious and open-minded so that you can best embrace what’s to come
Understand that not everything goes as planned and sometimes you have to reroute or take detours
Make sure to take care of yourself so that you can keep going
Have fun
If this narrative shift is new to you, try to start thinking of this work/battle/challenge against climate change as a journey into a new world. See how that changes how you think about yourself, your action, and what’s going on all around you. Will it make you more forgiving? More excited? Maybe even more eager to shape up and “get to work”?
As I like to say often — it’s not your responsibility to fix climate change, but all of us hold this incredible opportunity to enact change. To participate in the shift, the journey, the transformation towards a better world!
This post was originally posted on The Climate Optimist newsletter, a free weekly newsletter on Substack. Please subscribe for more of this to come!
