When the seas can no longer support
life, when the last forests have been clear-cut for timber and agricultural
interests, when climate change becomes an undeniable catastrophe and nature a
ravaged monstrosity we shun, remember that this was your choice. You chose it
in the smallest of ways countless times. It was a choice you made with every
plastic bottle of water you purchased. It was made every time you said “plastic’s
fine”, “I need a bigger car”, “I want a big family”, “I’m building a new home
in the country”, or “I’ll take a bacon cheeseburger”. It didn’t just happen and
you weren’t powerless to make a difference. You matter, but you chose to listen
to those who told you you didn’t.
But just as your bad choices can doom
the planet, so can even your smallest choices and actions help to save it. Every
time you have a choice to make, you have the opportunity to choose a
revolutionary one, regardless of its individual impact. For each positive
action you take, you will show to yourself and others that change is possible,
desirable, and not so very difficult. Each refusal to accept the status quo
will make the next choice not quite so difficult. Soon you will realize you are
not living in fear. Soon you will realize you do not have to subject your will
and your hopes and dreams to some greater authority, but are in fact an agent
of change capable of helping to make the world the way you want it to be. You
will not be a slave but a free man. For God’s sake, you might even find
yourself feeling joyful.
You can find yourself not merely rushing
through life but actively connected to each moment. You will experience the
feeling that you are where you are meant to be, living the life you were meant
to live, rather than feeling you have to accept the lot handed out to you by a
cruel and ugly world. You won’t have to foster idiotic and immature fantasies
of what your life might be because you will experience happiness as a real,
mature, human being. You might even catch yourself thinking something like “Holy
fuck, life is beautiful. I never thought it could be like this. This is what I’ve
been working for my whole life, and it had nothing to do with a big house and an
expensive car and a fake-titted wife.” You might find that happiness is not something
the outside world rewards you with if you sacrifice yourself to it but instead
something you feel when you get in touch with your real desires and
motivations.
You have the opportunity to choose joy
over desperation, hope over resignation, improvement over hopelessness and
resignation. Because you are not only powerful but good. Because you want both
what is good for you and good for everyone else. All you have to do is believe
that a better world is possible, just like a junkie can begin to see that his
addiction doesn’t have to rule him.
Just remember, the only argument you
have against what I am saying is “I’m powerless, there’s nothing I can do.” It is
the argument the addict makes again and again. It is what leads him to rock
bottom. We are all there now. We have reached the point where there is nowhere
to go but up. Let us, like the addict who seeks to turn his life around, no
longer lie about the reality of the situation. Let us make the first steps back
towards life in the only way possible, in faith that there is a better tomorrow
out there for us. And once you do so, once you take that first step, you will
realize that it isn’t about the destination at all but the joy you will experience
walking the path. You will feel happy, you will feel empowered, and you will
wonder why you have not taken this path long ago.
The choice, and the power, is yours.
