On… Mortality
Can Facing Death Help us Face Climate Change?
This week I’m preparing for a pretty invasive test to investigate some strange symptoms I’ve been experiencing, and to hopefully rule out anything too serious.
I’m young, I’m generally fit and healthy, and I live in a country with one of the best healthcare systems in the world. I have less to worry about health-wise than a lot of people.
And yet.
There’s nothing like a small alarm bell such as this one to get me thinking about how fragile life is.
Mortality is one of the least talked about facts of life, despite death being- as we all know- the only thing we can really be certain of.
I feel very vulnerable contemplating having this procedure, and I feel very vulnerable at the prospect of having the result. The only thing I’m really in control of is how I choose to approach this particular challenge. (I find writing helps, so this post is a kind of therapy- thank you for indulging me by reading it!)
And that squirmy, heart-racing, deep-breaths-don’t-even-help sort of vulnerability is exactly the kind of fear I get when I think about runaway climate change. It’s the fear of loss, of suffering, and ultimately of death.
It’s one of the least talked about facts of life, despite death being- as we all know- the only thing we can really be certain of. It’s not usually a conversation starter because it’s an uncomfortable and painful truth to live with.
And the same is true of climate change.
Outside of my usual networks, I always used to take a breath before telling people that I head up a climate change charity for a living because it used to get some very strange reactions.
Sometimes it began a long monologue about why climate change is a hoax or why it’s all so hopeless we should just give up now. Sometimes I would hear more information than I ever hoped to know about a person’s recycling practices. Other times it nearly killed the conversation altogether. At least that’s one thing I don’t need to worry about now I’ve stepped down from my role with Hope for the Future.
And it’s a similar kind of discomfort to talking about death. We’re not familiar with it and we’re not quite sure what to do with it.
But if we can feel more confident to have those conversations we might find it easier to face what’s happening to our planet and to do something more about it.
So this week I’m exploring mortality, and how the climate might benefit from our being more open to talking about it.
Don’t Mention the D Word
We’re encouraged not to think or talk about death much for fear of being morbid or dramatic.
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that she wants to discuss her wishes with regards to her death with her grown up children who now have children of their own.
‘I want to talk about it’, she said to me, ‘it doesn’t scare me, but they won’t have it. Sometimes they even walk out the room.’
But it’s true that there is an art to having these kinds of conversations.
They are intensely personal and they can be very painful. Our reasons for avoiding talking about these difficult topics of conversation are generally a sign of how much we care and don’t want to get it wrong.
If we can feel more confident to have those conversations we might find it easier to face what’s happening to our planet and to do something more about it.
I wrote about my late mentor, Chris Lowry, and her approach to death in a post on grief shortly after she died a couple of months ago. Chris was not at all afraid of death, and it showed in both her willingness to talk about it and to not talk about it, depending on how she perceived the needs of the people around her.
I’ve been curious to find out more about how she had come to gain so much wisdom in her approach to something she was as new to as the rest of us will be when our time comes. And knowing that spirituality was a big part of Chris’ life I’ve been looking for some answers there.
On the recommendation of a mutual friend of Chris and I’s, I found some insights in an amazing report from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, called Spiritualise.
A Spirituality of Climate Change
Spiritualise argues for the renewal of spirituality in mainstream public life.
The author of Spiritualise, Dr Jonathan Rowson, argues for the renewal of spirituality as part of mainstream public life. It’s a remarkable paper in that it both deals beautifully with the nebulous topic of spirituality and it is also academically rigorous.
Rowson does not advocate for a particular set of beliefs but rather for the practice of nurturing our inner worlds as a means of addressing the greatest challenges of our times, such as climate change.
According to Rowson, spirituality does not require adherence to religion or belief in the divine, although it might include that, but rather a commitment to valuing what lies beyond the purely physical realm.
For the purposes of this blog, I define spirituality as the feeling we get when we cannot help but act on something that matters to us.
Or the love that rushes when we are reunited with dear friends and family, or meet a new-born child.
It’s awe at nature, compassion for an injured animal, joy at our favourite song, and sadness at the loss of a loved one.
Spirituality is the knowledge that somewhere, on a deep level, how we live matters.
Which is why climate change is a spiritual issue because it confronts us with the truth that the choices we make every day matter to us and each other deeply.
A Spirituality of Mortality
It would be impossible to speak in any sort of depth about spirituality without speaking of death, which is why it forms a pretty substantial part of Rowson’s paper. If spirituality is meaning-making out of the chaos of our lives, then death is the final boundary that brings a sharp awareness of how fleeting and precious life is.
Death is arguably one of the most important building blocks to bringing meaning to our lives.
But it seems that awareness of our mortality can have polar opposite effects on us- we can swing one way of the other.
Hundreds of pieces of research show that reminders of our mortality, such as the threat of war or resource scarcity, trigger a tendency to become more suspicious of outsiders, to advocate for more aggressive punishment of group dissenters, and even an increased sense of greed.
Essentially, it doesn’t often bring out the best in us.
And, looking at recent headlines about asylum seekers crossing the channel, for example, I would be inclined to agree. When there is a higher level of fear in the air, it can bring out something very nasty in us.
And yet, thousands of years of religious and spiritual wisdom show that a sustained reflection on the ‘final destination of all man’ can actually become a catalyst for our emotional and spiritual growth.
None of these traditions shy away from the fact of death and most actively encourage their followers to take a view on what happens to a person after death as a significant part of advancing their spiritual life in the here and now.
The same is true of many people who have had a close encounter with death; the experience seems to create a renewed sense of appreciation for life, leading to greater generosity and heart-filled living. It generates a shift in world-view for the better, rather than a closing down of the self in defensive protection
How can it be that we react so differently to reminders of our mortality? Is there rhyme or reason to it?
Facing Death
The answer, according to Rowson, is in how the reminder of our mortality comes to us.
Brief or more distant reminders of death tend to activate our more destructive tendencies, whereas a sustained acceptance of mortality and a sense in which death is part of the wider whole of life, can be transformative in bringing greater shape and meaning to our days and can ultimately help us to lead better lives. (pp. 60- 66).
Palliative care nurse, Bonnie Ware, for example, has distilled the five most common regrets she hears from her patients in the hope that it will help us all to live better. They are;
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
I wish I hadn’t work so hard
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
I wish I had let myself be happier
Just this week I read a moving article by a 31-year-old living with a terminal cancer diagnosis who has just a few weeks left to live. Elliot Dallen shares the five things he would like to pass on to others which include ‘connecting with others’, ‘doing something for others’, and finally ‘protecting the planet’.
His approaching death has given him a sharper focus on what matters most in life; the people we love and planet we live on.
Climate Change and Death
Elliot’s deep confrontation with death naturally led him to think more deeply about climate change and how to do something positive about it.
This is what those of us who are communicating climate change are up against; we are asking people to face the reality of our mortality.
A safe space to express our fears can help us to stop pretending it isn’t happening or that it isn’t that bad really.
Practices that help us generate a greater acceptance of death may therefore considerably benefit our chances of responding to the climate emergency.
If we are more able to face the fact of our vulnerability, if we can even see the benefit to us emotionally and spiritually in doing so, we might find ourselves more able to unblock the ‘stuck feeling’ that many of us have in talking about and taking action on climate change.
This is the aim of a new initiative from the Climate Psychology Alliance, which has been running climate cafés that are designed to offer a ‘simple, hospitable, empathetic space where fears and uncertainties about our climate crisis can be safely expressed.’
There is a climate café being run online on the 26th September which you can take part in, and if you want to find out more about what being part of a climate café is like you can read this review by a fellow climate blogger, Rachael. She writes,
‘Over and over people described their intense appreciation of nature, a renewed awareness of just how damned beautiful everything is, an awakening that they attributed directly to facing ecological devastation.
In most cases this had led to an acute sense of responsibility and the urge to take action on some level, as well as an overwhelming gratitude for all that still exists.
It’s also hard to overstate the benefit of feeling sane for a change, of not being alone in the awareness of our predicament.’
Another immediate means of engaging with mortality is in our noticing of autumn, which is now here and will soon be making way for winter. We will be witness to falling leaves (arguably their finest hour), colder days and diminishing light.
I feel both a warm nostalgia and sadness during autumn. During this time of year I am usually at my happiest, having had a summer of adventures outdoors, but I also find myself daunted by the winter ahead.
It’s a useful reflection for how I feel about the fate of the earth.
As winter approaches, the nutrients from leaves is given back to the tree from which they emerged making way for their beautiful transformation in colour.
Climate Change and Meaning Making
This week an upcoming medical test has been the inspiration for my reflections on climate change.
Climate change is mostly seen as an issue of science and ecology. Increasingly it’s also seen as a political, economic and social issue. But in this blog I look at climate change through the lens of emotion and spirituality. Here climate change is explored as a deeply personal issue.
Because the state of our planet is the accumulation of billions of lives all interacting and reacting with each other to create the world we live in. And our response to the climate emergency is the direct result of how we think and feel about it, and how we narrate the story of what is happening to us and our planet.
So I often pause throughout my days and think, ‘is there something to learn about climate change here?’ Which is really to ask, ‘is there something more going on here than just what I see just in front of my nose?’
That might be the experience I had living in community for the past two weeks, the death of my friend Chris, or, yes, a test I don’t really want to have next week.
It’s a way I have found of making meaning and knowing that nothing in life happens in isolation.
Through climate change we are both burdened and privileged to know that everything really is connected, from the most mundane to the most significant, and that everything fits into the story of what’s unfolding in the world in some way.
About Me
I’m Jo, formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.
Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.