Dear friends,
How have we come to the end of 2021 already? A part of me feels like the entire year went too fast and another feels like the time passed has been excruciatingly slow. Through this time of so much loss and grief, we all held onto the small and big joys around us.
I think about the many things that have sustained me in these times. Coincidentally for me, this year of the pandemic was spent trying to connect with my consumption, my waste and understand ways in which I as an individual could respond differently in the face of this growing climate emergency. The process held within it great realisations for me about how much I do throw away and how much distance I had from my waste. Something I created on a daily basis.
It takes me back to all the writers, thinkers, activists of our time who drew our attention to our deep estrangement to our environment and how this estrangement caused us to be neglectful and destroy our surroundings. During the pandemic, we’ve seen many urgent calls to address our disconnect with our environment, to the ongoing climate crisis. Our response world over has been mostly lukewarm and slightly superficial changes, almost hinting towards our resistance to overhaul our current way of life which places immense importance on pace and consumption as markers of growth and prosperity.
But so many of us know that the process of tending to the earth, to bringing our attention to the world around us gives hope. Carl Safina, author of the book, Becoming Wild, said in an interview: “As we re-emerge post-pandemic, I hope we can maintain some newly re-learned habits of slowing pace, watching more closely, and finding great interest and peace in the changes and movements that living things constantly show us. I hope we seize this opportunity to see better, to enjoy, to learn from more of the world that lives close-by. There are other kinds of lives carrying on around us, passing along their cultures parallel to ours, and I feel a great beauty and great mystery in that.”
We hope you will join us as we hold these words close and look back at some people who are paying attention in this way.
Hope as the year closes it brings with it gentleness for you and yours.
Warmly,
Srinidhi
(Team TCC)