In a world that is changing, dying and evolving as rapidly as ours is right now, it’s fair enough that sometimes the grief, the pain, the confusion or the hopelessness will overcome and overwhelm us. And it’s important to know that that’s ok.  But it is just as important to know how to deal with this and move forward without losing our footing or our hope.

Emotions may well up and spill over, the pain of being witness to, and implicit in, the suffering of others or the destruction of nature, is a deep and heart-wrenching pain. Knowledge of the injustices inherent in the forced child labour involved with mining of rare metals required for the devices we use to communicate on a daily basis brings with it a pain with many layers and one that takes some time to fully reveal itself. 

The truth is, the current global context we are faced with, the paradoxes and contradictions, the challenges we are made to daily deal with, require us to be greater, bigger, better, than any previous generation on this planet.

Globally and locally, we are facing a terrifying state of affairs, and the broader our perspective, the more open our hearts and minds, the greater the grief, the frustration or sheer terror we may feel as we comprehend the repercussions of it all and come to terms with our reality. And as we continue to develop our awareness, our sensitivity and capacity for empathy, we also open ourselves up to feel greater pain; pain that we may have previously been immune to. Injustices we many have not been aware of, repercussions we had no knowledge of, suffering we never wanted to contribute to but we did without realising.

When we consider the entrenched and worsening economic injustice, the scale and evidence of human destruction of the earth, the toxicity of global politics and the ultra slow-motion death of democracy we are witnessing, the collapse of ecosystems and the unprecedented loss of species, the irreversible and traumatic effects of climate change being felt, and the innumerable social divisions and tensions still to be healed and reconciled, coupled with the inane commentary of the braindead morning show hosts and evening news anchors, it’s a wonder how or why any of us ever leave our beds, much less our homes. The struggle truly is real, and the grief is almost debilitating.

But for those of us who are designed and destined to affect society in a positive and constructive way, there is no other option but to continue; there is no other course of action to take but to keep contributing toward the rehabilitation of humanity. It is apparent that human civilisation is seriously sick, and rehabilitation and regeneration is what is required. But how do we remain effective changemakers while we deal with the grief of addressing the worst of humanity and always believing in the best of humanity? And how can budding activists, advocates and agents of change navigate this capitulating world with power and grace and deal with the grief of a dying, changing and evolving world? 

As we witness our society in its death throes, it is important to not lose our patience or our composure. We will benefit from remembering the fact that there will always be those who rush in to help, those who want to help but are too angry, upset, scared or otherwise ill-equipped to be able to help, and those who calmly watch from a distance without much concern. This spectrum of effort, care or lack thereof should not be the cause of our anger. Other people’s inaction or apathy is, in all honesty, none of our business, and focusing energy on feeling indignation is not effective change-making, it’s just a waste of energy and a way of relieving ourselves of role or responsibility. By fixating on the inaction of others, we unwittingly slide into the category of those who are incapable of assisting. 

By fostering anger or resentment we will render our thoughts, our ideas and our actions less compassionate, less holistic, lacking in clarity and focus, and in turn, we become less effective and eventually completely redundant. 

It’s understandable that at times we will feel angry, hurt, upset or deep pain about the state of the world and all that seems to be going wrong, but it’s also important to remind ourselves that to remain in anger is not an effective action or state of being; it’s just a feeling. A legitimate feeling, but not an effective action. 

To be hurt, scared, saddened, grief-stricken, inconsolable at times or full of rage, are all legitimate emotional states and feelings; but these feelings are useless to us unless they are properly processed and channelled into effective action. Feelings, once felt, require a level of emotional intelligence to be dealt with if we are to be efficient and effective with our energies towards creating a more just, sustainable and equitable world. 

The effective changemakers are the ones who are able to remain calm and composed, clear-headed and focused, like a paramedic in an emergency situation. They will see solutions, they will address root causes, they will work to save the life regardless of fault or blame or the circumstance that led to the accident. Because the mission of the changemaker, as with the mission of the paramedic is to save and protect life; not to find blame, feel anger, or sink into sadness. 

The changemaker is the one who seeks to evolve society rather than oppose injustice; for injustice is an infinite resource in a system designed to maintain it. The agent of social change is the one who can move beyond the pain and enter the space of positive action. As the renowned Brazilian educator and academic Paulo Friere put it in his elaboration of the process of conscientisation, it is for us to be revolutionary and not reactionary, lovers of life first and foremost and less focused of adversarial positions and politics.

To be alive today and have any sense of awareness or ability to feel connection or capacity to feel love, which we all will innately have, will mean that we will assuredly feel some degree of grief or sadness. It is almost impossible to be alive in this world and not have some experience of emotional pain. It is only how it is experienced, felt and expressed that will vary. Whether we are passionate climate activists or deny it with every fibre in our body, it is inevitable that the pain of the earth and the grief of this planet, is being felt in the human body and its effects being felt on our consciousness.

This basic premise of ecopsychology, which extends the mental and physical health of the human being to connection with wider ecological and environmental factors, has been at the basis of many cultures, societies and traditions, proposes that climate grief is not an optional extra, but due to the inextricably interconnected nature of all of life and the oneness and unity of humans with their home planet.

As such, climate grief is unavoidable, and just like any other difficult emotion, some will feel it and acknowledge it and speak about it and try to resolve it, and other less resilient souls will deny it, suppress it, repress it and cause it to come out in toxic and unhealthy ways. This is at the root of climate denial.

This toxic way of dealing with pain is to ignore, repress, suppress, deny or disassociate with the feelings, but like any form of toxicity, it will inevitably come out. If not through sadness felt, then through anger in the body, or verbal expression or physical illness, or violence, or passive-aggressiveness; either way, pain will not remain unexpressed.

The healthy way of dealing with pain is to grieve it. It is to weep, it is to release and relieve. We may never have been taught how to feel, deal with and express emotions, and certainly not how to properly process grief, but it is up to us to find out how to do so, and then to do it. It is up to us to find ways to release the heart of the tension, release the body from the hold of anger, let the tears stream down our faces and acknowledge that it really does hurt. To be brave enough to accept that we are hurting and allow that pain to move through us and out of us. Because pain is not a good fuel. 

And though some will tell you all great art comes from great pain, I would say that if you wish to continue feeling pain, then continue glorifying art that comes from pain. But once we’ve had enough of the drama, once we have lost our appetite for feelings of pain and suffering and perpetual unrest, then we can accept that fueling our art or our life’s work with raw and unprocessed pain is pretty much the same thing as using coal for electricity; it is dirty, inefficient, non-renewable and less powerful. It’s better to switch to renewables, and in this context, the renewable form of energy, the limitless, free and perfectly healthy for of power, is Love, while the non-renewable energies are fear, anger, pain and the rest of that spectrum.

To motivate your work from place of love, to find something you wish to act for, rather than something to act against, this is a healthier and more effective way of creating social change.

But what else? Other than turning inwards and finding a love-based motivation to inspire our work, what else can we do to become effective changemakers? If we are to not dwell in the indignation and anger, and if not using our pain to fuel our actions, our activism or our art, then what do we do with the grief of climate change and ecological collapse?

When we begin to see grief as the by-product of experience and not the product itself, we edge closer to comprehending the answer. First, we must understand emotion as a response to experience and not a part of our identity.

Secondly, knowing that diverse experience is inevitable and required, like food and water, but not all of the food and water remains in the body. The nutrient and nourishment required is removed from the food and digested as best the body can and turned into energy. This is equivalent to the learnings and insights we can gain from the experiences of life. The unprocessed or unrequired parts of that diet of experience must then pass through the body and be released as waste, or perhaps manure, but released from the body nevertheless.

The by-product of this process of turning the experience into learning is this funny little thing we are designed to do which is the feeling of emotions. The emotions are to be felt and released, but to hold on to the feeling of the experience rather than the learning of the experience is much the same as holding onto your own shit instead of the nutrients from the food you eat. Which is probably why so many angry people are so full of shit. This anger gets in the way of reason, logic and wisdom, and it also blocks compassion, comprehension and intelligence. And as changemakers, we can’t afford that.

The lesson here is to feel our feelings, but don’t let them cloud our thoughts, our judgements or our decisions; especially not when it comes to efforts for creating social change. In the world of social change, when it comes to affecting true systems change and seeing to the needs of humanity, raw unbridled passion or emotionally charged decisions are not the most effective or helpful.

To do justice to our causes, whether it be action on climate change, gender equality, economic justice, Indigenous sovereignty or animal rights, it is our composure and mental clarity that is most urgently required, and not our hurt or our pain. The world already has enough pain in it, and if we insist on using our pain or anger or hurt as the fuel that powers our engine, then we will continue to design ineffective projects or produce toxic environments, which will offer some results but not a clean burn. 

The grief of ecological loss is truly immense. The pain of having to let go of the idea of owning a home or literally watching your home burn to the ground, the pain of watching hopes and dream evaporate along with millions of acres of virgin rainforest, the pain of letting go of expectations based on how we were told life was meant to be; this is a great burden placed on the shoulders of the generation who will inherit climate change, as well as the generation of Millenials, lost in the twilight of this dying society. 

This pain is real and it is worthy of full and proper grieving, if not for the sake of our own mental health and resilience, for the sake of the planet and the human race. For the sake of designing more effective campaigns, communications and initiatives for social, environmental and economic justice. To fully embody the solutions-focused approach of the effective change-maker, requires us to release the negative emotions brought about and the forgiving of humanity as a whole. 

To affect positive social change and establish a peaceful, just and sustainable world, requires a deep love and affection for humanity and all human beings, and that requires forgiveness, and forgiveness first requires proper grieving.

- by Erfan Daliri