Warrior not Worrier

“This morning, at 2am I woke in fright. Words so familiar to me, echoing in my mind. But I couldn’t place their origin. Cold creeped over me when I remembered…I wrote these words months ago. They sat unpublished until today. I feel a strange shortness of breath at the premonition like nature of some of them…now more relevant than ever. “

Written: Dec 2019. Published: March 2020

You know that proverb people use when they lack control of a situation, or the immediate inability to see a clear path through the fallout? The one that’s often used when we don’t know how to reach people drowning in the deluge of their experience?

‘Every cloud has a silver lining’ is that things we say when we don’t know what to say. When things are so bad that we become debilitated by our thoughts and emotions, unable to process or progress. It is said in a bid to encourage movement forward, to inspire us to look deeper for beacons in the darkness… to encourage us that the fight will be worth it.

And yes, there is truth in the statement, often there is a silver lining. If we wait it out long enough, stay determined long enough, the lining eventually appears and begins to give way to clarity. But there are flaws in this proverb I am struggling with today. As I look around me, as I read the news, as I become more educated about the state of our planet and the potential future that awaits us, I am struggling to find a lining bright enough to show me clarity is coming.

I recently moved to Indonesia, driven by a number of personal changes in my life. What attracted me to these shores was the ability to live a good life, beyond the pressure and rat race of western culture. The opportunity to be able to work less and live more…to spend more time with those I love simply enjoying the beauty of the world and each other. The chance to re-assess my priorities for myself and my family… and future-proof our existence moving forward.

You see, as a teacher in design and innovation, I had become increasingly aware of the peril facing our continued existence the last number of years. Through my work, in an industry where sustainability has been discussed as a loose concept to drive ideas for more than a two decades, I had gradually become more educated on the dire impact our practices were having on our planet. But never could I have been prepared for what I am quickly coming to understand.

Every day, as I continue to navigate through the data and stories of what lies around us and before us, I am beginning to realise even more the extraordinary effort it is going to require to turn the tides from the destination we are rapidly approaching. And it feels impossible at this very moment.

The streets, aquifers and shores that surround my new home are screaming as they rapidly suffocate under a mountain of plastic garbage. The water table is drying up and they anticipate that by 2025 at the latest, the island of Bali where I live now, will be out of water. That 4.5 million people’s lives, who have nowhere else to go, on the line.

Each year, more and more resorts open their doors on these shores and more and more tourist flock to enjoy the cheap opportunities to escape their stifling lives. Their coming feeds the growing monster of consumption that’s rapidly killing this ancient island of the gods. I knew all of this of course before I moved here. I had travelled here many times before making the leap, but in the three years between my last visit and the move, the explosion has been extraordinary. I hardly recognise the places I frequented when they floated peacefully between the rice fields. I struggle to find my bearings in what seemed previously so easy to navigate via landmarks and sidestreets. Bali is bursting at the seams. Everywhere you look there are new cafe’s and beach clubs and experiences to behold…and it’s wonderful and exciting. There is opportunity here to enjoy a life, if even for a moment, that was impossible to afford in our home country. We love our life here, and we love this island and its people.

But when the rains come, as they do almost every day, and the subak flows fast through the villages, it brings with it a torrent of trash. A visual reminder of the impact this ‘life’ is having on the finite resources that sustains it. And as I write this story, my breath is chasing my heartbeat and tears are falling down my cheeks. Because I realise, while as I designer I am working every day to try to make positive change and impact on this situation, I am also part of the problem. And I am struggling to see how to find a way forward. I am struggling to find the silver lining.

So having known some of this at a distance before coming here, what has made this esoteric concept and long-distance knowledge hit home so abruptly?

Well, now there is this cough. Nothing dire or of particularly negative effect, but just a lingering cough of more than 8 weeks that, despite multiple rounds of medication and natural treatments, simply won’t budge. Strangely, we are not alone. After speaking to many other parents and friends, both here and across the world, they also noted that they had been fighting similar ailments for a number of weeks they could not shift.

This morning, I awoke with anxiety out of control thinking….what if this is it? The beginning of a global health epidemic? Mass immunity degradation. What if something big, uncontrollable is coming…and no-one is noticing because it’s just a cough. “Most likely an environmental allergy” they all say. Suddenly it’s personal. Suddenly now, whatever it is, is effecting normality to the point where it's making the day-to-day less than comfortable.

I started to panic, thinking ‘God I am in the worst place in the world for the spread of this kind of thing! Whatever it is.’ Millions of people packed in like sardines. Substandard vaccine care and often poor health and hygiene understanding. Pollution is bad, water quality is poor, and every day the influx of people is getting more intense…bringing god knows what across the waters. Suddenly, for the very first time since making the dream of living here a reality, I wanted out. Everything in me is screaming to GET OUT.

I feel paralysed by fear. Confused at how my own head has even connected this cough with these personal struggles of how to live sustainably. From the outside, they seem totally unrelated. God sometimes the mind can be a total asshole.

But then I realise, that this is the crux of the whole challenge. In these muddy, messy waters lies the secret to the only way a global shift towards a more sustainable life will happen, and that is this…

We can have all the deepest altruistic intentions in the world. Be totally committed to the fight for a better life and, in the long term, a better world. But at the end of the day, when it comes to choosing between the long term, or short term self-preservation, most of us will choose self-preservation because that’s what’s personal. That’s what affects us directly, now. Most of us are worriers, not warriors, and the only way to change that is to force a fight for survival that is personal. To reconnect us with our mortality. To open our eyes to our interconnectedness with each other and our planetary home.

That’s why so many of the global innovation happening in the fight for sustainability is coming out of underprivileged countries and communities, conceived by innovators with, often, very little resources. Because there, on the front lines, it matters. There it is personal. There it can be a matter of life or death. Bali does offer that opportunity and it is a big part of what drew me here….the opportunity to make a difference. But it was passion then, not personal.

I feel as though I am standing of the edge of darkness right now….and it’s terrifying because I realise I am not as strong as I thought I was. I realise that, until we have to make sacrifices that truly and directly affect us in a very personal way, every fight we fight will always be as worriers and not as warriors. And with fear rather than sacrifice as our driving force, we have no foresight and no real power, fighting only to survive and not to live.

For me, the biggest challenge right now is finding the bravery to harness the right force… and hoping like hell I can stop being a worrier and become the warrior I need and want to be.