How Contemplating Our Mortality Can Save the Planet
"My ideal future is one where we accept the limitations of this mortal life and embrace the freedom that allows us to act with urgency inspired by our values." Concetta Abbate
This past weekend I had the honor of being an artist and research fellow with the Human Impacts Institute’s Social Amplifiers for Climate Awareness program. We spent two intensive days on Governor’s Island, NYC at the Climate Imaginarium. There were guest speakers presenting on current climate topics and approaches to activism towards saving our planet. We were asked to complete a writing prompt “what would be your desired future?”
I thought back to the pigeons nesting in the flower pots on my fire escape. The baby pigeons are born in pairs but earlier that week one of the baby pigeons in the flower pot died. Both the parents came in the morning to remove the dead chick and then sat vigil with the remaining surviving baby all day. I was amazed, watching this scene, how animals know so instinctively how to respond to death.
Our planet is dying and we humans are searching for collective action on how to respond. How do we adequately grieve the species and biosystems that have already been lost? How do we preserve and protect what remains? Only 4% of the earth’s mammals and 29% of the earth’s birds are still considered wild life (https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass). Without spaces for wild animals and plants to thrive where will we even be able to look for such precious learning and inspiration?
My ideal future is one where we accept the limitations of this mortal life and embrace the freedom that allows us to act with urgency inspired by our values to stand up for both human and more than human life. I hope for a future where we think collectively in a framework which includes plants, animals and biosystems. A world where we no longer view disease, disability and death as a personal failing, fault or weakness but a part of this vulnerable life. A world where we make health care accessible for all to ease the pain and suffering of existence. A world without needless violence and climate destruction.
How did our ancestors honor death? How did we make space for death in the past? When we allow death to occur naturally it makes space for regeneration, keeps the planet in balance and gives life. By evading death we engage in endless consumption, trying to numb ourselves of the temporality of time.
Recognizing our own limited time shows us the limited resources of the planet and helps us recognize the preciousness of each object, each material, each building and structure. Let’s preserve and not take life for granted in the same way that the wild pigeons on my NYC fire escape protected their surviving baby chick and treated the deceased with honor and care.
The poet Jorie Graham once says in the interview that, “The Earth is a Dying Beloved”. I would take that one step further to say that our dying, beloved Earth is ALSO a dying US. Humanity cannot exist in isolation just as life cannot exist without a healthy understanding of death.
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