I have been pondering this question over the week. It is the first task in my Awakened Woman journal.
What breaks my heart is humanity’s disconnect with Mother Nature. It seems to me that we could solve so many of our social and environmental ills if we could find this connection again.
What breaks my heart is how we cannot seem to live in harmony with wildlife in wild places as we once did. What happened to being open to learning from Mother Nature? For She has much to share with us about how we tread in this life.
In June we had World Giraffe Day. In August it was World Elephant and World Lion Day. September is World Rhino Month. And so it goes, on and on, each new day dedicated to another species in peril.
The CITES CoP18 meeting took place in Geneva recently. The results of this conference of the parties was mixed. While we can take some hopeful moments away for some species after this year’s conference, there is definitely still too much of a focus on wildlife as a commodity for my liking.
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater” JRR Tolkien
The climate crisis continues. The Amazon is burning. In a world where we are bombarded with what seem utterly hopeless and insurmountable odds, I want to share some examples that I know of – examples of what is still fair and where there is still love.
The following are links to messages of hope that fill my inbox, make up the social media threads I follow and come from personal experience having met some of the individuals at the heart of these organisations and collectives.
Giraffe Conservation Foundation
And many more… so I need to amend the statement I started with… not all humanity has lost that vital connection we have with Mother Earth. There are still many of us who will continue to use our voices for the voiceless.
And even more than the above examples we need to be encouraged that every single individual action we take counts… we can make a difference for good at an individual level. It is about the second thought you spare in your daily journey through life, being mindful of how your tread, what and how much you consume, how you dispose of waste.
It’s about how we need to rethink education and empower the next generations to make better choices than we have.
And please understand even if you don’t care about animals and wild places, the changes all these people of are working for are in our own best interests too – the survival of humanity!
And so what breaks my heart is what we’ve lost but in the same breath what shores up my heart and gives me hope is the countless daily actions of compassionate individuals. It is this conservation collective that will keep the worst case scenarios at bay. Or so I choose to believe…
Thanks for helping to keep that spark of Connection alive and shining, Cathryn … yes, we can ALL live in hopes and make a difference by trying to be ‘a pure, clear light, like a little candle, burning in the night’ of ignorance and greed – each of us shifting shadows away from our small corner. ‘Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.’ Anne Frank