Love the World As You Change It
I can’t stop thinking about footage I saw years ago of a plastic-filled junkyard contrasted with a timelapse of a tomato disintegrating into dirt. The tomato swiftly returns to the earth; the plastic sits lifeless in landfills for centuries to come.
It’s not the only image of modern life that haunts me. There’s the photo of Jeffrey Bezos and his trophy wife standing awkwardly in front of their new $165 million-dollar home. There’s the rotting feet of a homeless man who wanted me to buy him Burger King before taking him to the hospital — the feet propped, sockless, on the table in the middle of the restaurant so he could relieve his pain. There’s the visual chaos of the interstate near my home: the billboards for botox, the uninspired architecture of corporate America, the scars of tire screeches on the road — each a semi-permanent memorial of a likely accident or death.
I could go on, and have gone on like this in my head for years, hurting under this weight.
Yet I’ve found that when the only voice in my head is the cynic, I hate the world. And since this world is where I am, I end up hating life, which is all I have.
I want the world to change, but I also want to love it. I want to love the world as I change it.
I’m embarrassed by how trite that sounds. And still, it’s what I want. To better hold gratitude and dissatisfaction together. To celebrate modern marvels like two-day shipping while also opposing the fact that Bezos makes 6,474x the median Amazon worker. To enjoy instant communication while also mourning the fact that it sometimes makes me feel lonely. To be grateful for fully stocked grocery stores nearby while also worrying about the toll that food production today takes on the planet.
All of it together is true.
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I’m not sure how this little post fits with spiritual humanism, but I’ve been sitting with the idea for so long that I felt I needed to get it out as a stepping stone to what’s next. Thanks for reading!