Earth Day thoughts
Thinking about resistance in its various forms
It’s Earth Day, a day to ‘demonstrate support for environmental action,’ which I’m all for…and every April 22 I invariably think ‘come on, every day is earth day.’ We live on this planet, we rely on having reliably clean air and water and tolerable air temperatures, yet all of those essentials have been under siege for a while now.
I didn’t sit down to write a cranky post about climate change today. Instead, I was thinking I’d pursue a line of thought I’ve had about resistance in all of its forms. I suppose they’re not unrelated! Earth Day was designated as such in 1970 out of concern for the planet but there’s obviously been a ton of resistance over the past 55 years to actually changing behavior that impacts the environment. That knowledge, this morning’s gray skies and knowing that the Gray Whale who washed up on Alameda Beach on Sunday is the fifth whale to be found dead in the Bay over the past few weeks has me feeling a bit disheartened. Did you know that “Gray whales make one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal, traveling about 10,000 miles round-trip and in some cases upwards of 14,000 miles.1 An amazing feat, and so sad that increasing numbers aren’t making it. Something (else) is clearly out of balance. Ugh.
Back to the line of thought about resistance. I was thinking about my own aversion to discomfort on Saturday, when I felt burned out and unwilling to go to the closest 50150 protest in Oakland. Instead, I spent the time I’d carved out to go to the protest to write postcards as part of another Activate America campaign. A worthy exchange, I reasoned, but my resistance to getting off my couch niggled me a bit. Why was it so easy to avoid discomfort, however slight?
Like the other day, when it was colder (by California standards) outside than expected when we went for a walk. I immediately thought I should go back and get something else to wear. But I stopped myself. Could I embrace the cold rather than avoiding it or covering it up? Suddenly I was in a different realm of experience of the temperature, it suddenly was about the quality of cold, what it felt like, what it actually was, rather than my knee jerk reaction.
I thought of of another long-ago friend, a psychologist, asking a small group of us to “notice your resistance. What’s it about?”
What is it about?
As I learned from a PT last year while addressing some new-found bone-health issues, “resistance” can be negative and positive. Resistance bands, for example, are a helpful, strength-building tool.
I like thinking of looking at the resistance movement of our times in the same ways as those resistance-building exercises. It takes a lot of reps, done over time, to see results. And sometimes you feel results before you see them. Or maybe you need special equipment, like a bone scan to see if things are changing. Still, whether you know for sure something is making a difference can’t be the reason to either exercise or not.
To combat my mood, I set out for a walk earlier than usual this morning (even though it was cold and grey!) to see what migrant birds may have flown in overnight. Spring bird migration has been ramping up, as a quick perusal of Bird Cast will show. I knew it was a good time to see and hear some temporary visitors and new arrivals. I found it a little more quiet than I would have liked at my local patch, but I was rewarded with a first-of-season (for me) Western Tanager and a Black-headed Grosbeak, returning after their winters in Mexico. Think of these birds, making their way through the night skies despite false borders, habitat loss and weather variabilities. Amazing.
NOAA Fisheries, Gray Whale, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/gray-whale