Just a sprinkle of doom
"I do have a growing sense of existential dread, though—
Just about politics and the climate, and the world in general," I said, my hands either side of my mouth, which is where they seem to rest when I have something negative to say.
"Yeah, there is that," my husband agreed, before he took a sip of his wine (aptly named Doom Juice - very delicious, FYI), and I played with the salty rim of my margarita.
There was silence for a minute, and then we moved on to the next topic—
Most likely fawning over some very cute thing one of our kids is doing at the moment, or negotiating new windows of time for each of us to sleep and/or exercise.
An hour later, we strolled home to our two glorious kids, said see ya later to our very excellent nanny (who did a weekend shift for the first time ever: highly recommend; must repeat), popped some lamb chops on the BBQ, and sat in the summer sun, the salt from an earlier ocean swim crispy on our skin.
I don’t know about you, but I keep having these moments where I’m face-to-face with the juxtaposition of the warm glow of my (very lucky, very privileged) life, and a feeling of impending doom about the human race.
It’s a strange, liminal experience, where what’s immediately in front of me is pretty bloody wonderful (again: privilege), but what’s beyond and between and ahead of us is — on balance — pretty bloody depressing.
If I was trying to position myself as a Very Good Human, this is the part where I’d tell you I now spend more hours than ever trying to better the world around me, donating time and money and effort to all sorts of honourable causes.
Fact is, I don’t.
In reality, the more often I have this kind of experience, the more I retreat away from the news and back into my small but delightful life, hoping that if I shrink or limit the horizon of my thoughts, I’ll be able to avoid the discomfort that comes with thinking too deeply about the collective pickle we find ourselves in.
As you might be able to guess, this approach isn’t really working.
The little thought-goblin in my head is tickling the edges of my brain and whispering things like, "record-breaking floodssssss" and "mounting geopolitical tensionssssss" and "that orange man with the toupéeeeeeee" —
But I persist with my head-in-the-sand approach nonetheless, because (as noted above) I’m not a Very Good Human, but rather a Very Human Person, dealing with temporal exhaustion (this banger of a quote from sociologist Elise Boulding comes to mind: "If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future") and a bunch of hardwired cognitive biases (loss aversion, hyperbolic discounting, the optimism bias, and the bystander effect, to name a few) that make it obscenely difficult to comprehend and respond to the kind of large, slow-moving threats — like climate change — that are fuelling that growing sense of dread.
In the moments where I *do* feel the weight of the world, I’m met with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness about my ability to take any action that’s BIG enough.
Like, yeah, I recycle, and march for queer rights, and try to foster kindness and curiosity in my kids, but it feels like trying to dismantle Everest with a plastic fork.
I’m wondering if you ever feel the same?
Because, try as I might (and maybe I’m looking in the wrong places), I can’t seem to find this experience reflected back at me online.
It feels as though it’s not really… talked about?
Maybe because it’s unflattering to admit to any kind of wilful ignorance, or confronting to put feelings of powerlessness on paper, or gross to admit there’s good stuff happening in your own life right now—
But part of me wonders if the notion of being a Very Human Person could actually be a helpful one.
Something that opens the door for more honest and nuanced conversations.
Something that allows us to get full visibility on our limitations (and therefore find ways of working *with* them, rather than trying to swim against the current of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution).
Something that fosters communities of people who might otherwise feel alone or weird or ‘less than’, and drives them into action that feels far more meaningful, given the rules of critical mass.
Something that creates space for clumsy, imperfect action — which I think we can both agree is better than giving up.
Feeling exceptionally human (for better or worse),
Kirsty xo