Depression, Eco-Anxiety, and the Grace of Hopelessness

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

Sometimes I get depressed, and feel like I can't get anything done.

Sometimes I get anxious, and feel like I need to control everything and everyone.

Sometimes I get depressed and anxious at the same time, which makes me feel like doing nothing and like trying to control everything and everyone, at the same time. (I'm talented like that.)

Sometimes I do what I need to do to cope well (which in the case of my particular physiology means getting some exercise, eating some vegetables, and forcing myself to do something life-giving rather than scrolling social media).

Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes a summer-like storm blows through in the middle of January and the river rises ten feet overnight, nearly to flood stage, and there is an actual tornado in the middle of nothing resembling tornado season, and I look at the river swelling its banks in the season it's supposed to be low and I know that 2020 is going to flood the heck out of the Midwest— again.

Sometimes I take long showers and watch all that perfectly usable water drain away and think about the energy it took to produce and how there would need to be more than four Earths to accommodate the "needs" of seven billion typical Americans. 

Sometimes I try to keep up on environmental news and I read about the thousands of species going extinct each year and the government protection of polluting corporations and the way that short-term profits are always favored over long-term survivability, and I scroll through pictures of cute white women showing off their metal straws and furoshiki-wrapped gifts telling me that everything will be okay if I just buy the right "zero-waste" gear. 

Sometimes I dig up Jerusalem artichokes and wash them and scrub off the dirt and blend them and dehydrate them and grind them into flour and bake with them— and wonder why on earth I spend so much time doing this when I can just spend a few cents on flour that was grown in some far-flung locale and I can only hope from a label that it was grown in an ethical way that isn't leaching poisons into our waterways.

Sometimes I buy a carbon monoxide alarm and wonder who mined the metals that are in it and what they suffered, and what kind of factory put it together and whether the workers made a decent wage, and how the alarm will go in a landfill when I'm done with it, and wonder if I should've tried to find an eco-friendly alarm that was ethically-made rather than just shopping at Walmart.

Sometimes I show up at a fundraiser and the only food they have for sale is meat that will be thrown away if no one buys it, and I think about the pigs living their lives in pain and I buy a hot dog and eat it and then have second thoughts and feel shame of being part of the system, and anger that treating animals in this way is legal in the first place.

Sometimes the global south is on fire. Increasingly it is on fire.

The world feels overwhelming sometimes.

The world feels unbearably harsh.

And it seems wrong to trust that God is still in control.

It seems wrong to cut myself any slack.

It seems wrong not to panic.

It seems wrong to trust that I can act, can do enough, if I'm not panicking.

It seems silly to believe that I can do what I need to do from a place not of terror, but grace.

But grace is where God meets the world.

Grace is how God teaches me that it's not all up to me.

Grace is how I find rest and stillness and realization that I have an identity beyond what I do.

And paradoxically, grace is what keeps me fighting.

To keep writing and drawing, and scrubbing Jerusalem artichokes and saving kale seeds and plotting my garden.

To keep sharing food and swapping goods and composting and reading good books that inspire me.

To keep educating people and teaching skills and learning new skills and scheming different ways to form a life-giving local economy.

To keep going, even when I'm depressed and anxious.

To take a day off, knowing that all will not crash into ruin if I do.

I believe that we are in the middle of the greatest climate emergency humans have ever faced. I can't and won't forget that.

But I will not do my best work if I am just reacting in terror of what the world may be. I need to work and fight from a place of rest and grace and love.

It feels hopeless, sometimes. Often. 

But maybe I don't need to hope that I can change things. Maybe I don't have to hope that my individual actions can turn the tide and keep the world from destruction. 

Maybe that's too much to ask of myself.

Like Sam Gamgee in Lord of the Rings: "And after all he never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning; but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed."

Like Sam, I won't just turn around and head home; I'll keep walking. I'll allow myself to postpone the despair, one step at a time, and not feel guilty that I often feel cheerful. I will allow myself to find joy in the songs and good food and humor and friendship and naps along the way, while at the same time never forgetting my way forward.

That is a kind of grace.

~~~