In 2019, I started writing a book about the complexities of how our mental health can be impacted by climate change, and things to do about that. Then March 2020 hit, and I stopped writing. Fast forward to 2022. I’m looking over the book and wanted to share the myriad of quotes that were inspirational and supportive for me. Maybe some of these quotes will also click with you:
“I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.”
“If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not”
“Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.”
“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well…Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out…It is also this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now”
“Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”
“Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values.”
“Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.”
“It’s never a question of skin pigmentation. It’s never a question of just culture or sexual orientation or civilization. It’s what kind of human being you’re going to choose to be from your mama’s womb to the tomb and what kind of legacy will you leave.”
“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.”
“We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”
“Action is the antidote to despair.”
“That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.”
“we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit. the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves. we have got to make this world user friendly. user friendly.”
“I hate hope. It was hammered into me constantly a few years ago when I was being treated for breast cancer: Think positively! Don’t lose hope! Wear your pink ribbon with pride!…Hope? What about a cure?”
“Sit, be still, and listen, because you’re drunk and we’re at the edge of the roof.”
“When any of us feels any kind of distressing emotion, there are defense mechanisms that come into play that help try to stabilize us so we don’t feel so much distress. Those defenses are things like denial, numbing, minimizing the problem or intellectualizing it in some way. These help us emotionally on one level, but they also mean we’re more disconnected from the reality, from feeling the energy to want to engage. So the very thing that protects us also prevents us from taking action.”
“You can present the material, but you can’t make me care”
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”
“The secret of change is to focus all our energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
”
“Recovery is the normal adaptational process that follows destruction just like grief is the normal adaptational process that follows loss.”
“I used to think that any solution would come from the paradigms that I know. Now I think that the only thing is to think of the unimaginable. For the new generation, the unimaginable is not as unimaginable.”
“Many people think that the point of life is to solve their problems and be happy. But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of problems. Your purpose in life may be to become more who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life. That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life. They are afraid to let it flow through them, and so their vitality gets channeled into ambitions, addictions, and preoccupations that don’t give them anything worth having. A dark night, may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.”
“Sometimes I think,
I need a spare heart to feel
all the things I feel.”
“Sometimes you have to get angry to get things done.”
“Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall.”
“For Warmth
I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm—
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hand preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.”
“Anxiety was born in the same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.”
“The universe doesn’t allow perfection.”
“Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.”
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.”
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
“Climate change is a lot like death. We all understand it is inevitable, but few of us truly accept it.”
“I really can’t say, I guess I laugh to keep from crying
So much going on, people killing, people dying.”
“Our choice is to be in love or to be in fear. But to choose to be in love means to have a mountain inside of you, means to have the heart of the world inside you, means you will feel another’s suffering inside your own body and you will weep. You will have no protection from the world’s pain because it will be your own.”
“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
“Some days, 24 hours is too much to stay put in, so I take the day hour by hour, moment by moment. I break the task, the challenge, the fear into small, bite-size pieces. I can handle a piece of fear, depression, anger, pain, sadness, loneliness, illness. I actually put my hands up to my face, one next to each eye, like blinders on a horse.”
“Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be of much help to others”
“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul. Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.”
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
“Be generous with your strengths and skills—they are not your private property.”