“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” Viktor E. Franklin I would call myself an activist. I participate in petitions.
I write letters to important people on behalf of causes, I’ve been to protests and strikes. I like to educate myself about a wide range of issues and sometimes even write articles about them. However, lately, with increasing frequency I’ve been falling into episodes of extreme disheartenment and despair. In those moments, the magnitude of the world’s problems becomes so overwhelming that I’d rather ignore everything and just pretend it’s not happening. I call these my ‘fantasy’ episodes. I swap my usually favoured insightful documentaries for films and TV dramas – the more fantastical the better. I stop reading the newspapers and read my favourite novels instead. I build a comforting bubble around myself and choose to shut out reality as much as I can. I’d slipped into one of these lapses a couple of weeks ago. And then one single image was powerful enough to snap me out of it. It was an image that swept through Instagram, flaring up people’s anger and igniting their passion. It was the Amazon rainforest on fire. Eerily, two days later, a treasured nature reserve local to my home had a small fire of its own that resulted in some chemical waste being released into the river. I was devastated.