Practicing Happiness as a Mindful Activist

Walking today with Abby the collie, my body felt positively autumnal in the morning air. This patch of planet Earth is cooling, and our neighborhood sky-mountain-forest will soon be filled with fluttering, falling leaves. Winter’s cold is on the way.

Seasonal cycles are no surprise, but amid the ordinary, the extraordinary raises its woolly head. Human society and life on Earth are experiencing numerous critical challenges. And the future is filled with uncertainty.

What for you are some of the major social and ecological challenges facing us?

For me, I am deeply concerned about climate chaos and ecocide that bring fires and floods, storms and sea rise. Industrial food production will be reduced. Fascism and corporatocracy are silencing democracies around the world and sowing confusion and conflict through their propagandized news media. Patriarchy and misogyny are harming women and deluding men. Wealth hoarding driven by greed is causing high levels of systemic poverty. Systemic prejudice is increasing due to misunderstandings, fear, and hatred of others. Perpetual warfare and a culture of violence continue as natural and unchallenged. Pandemics threaten both young and old. And artificial intelligence (AI), bio-engineering, and nuclear energy and weapons remain uncontained and insufficiently regulated.

How are these and other challenges affecting you and your loved ones in mood and lifestyle?

It seems to me that many if not most of the eight billion of us humans are anxious, not knowing what we should or can do. I am worried about my grandchildren and children around the world in 2023 and in coming decades, centuries, and millennia. How can we help care for people, other species of animals and plants, and ecosystems of water, soil, and air? In the midst of stress and uncertainty, how can we care for our own body-mind to keep it healthy, happy, hopeful, and helpful?

What is your story of what is happening and what needs to be done?

For me, I see a whole system transformation of society and nature that prefigures the collapse of our unjust and unsustainable civilization. Civilizations rise and fall, and new ones emerge from the chaos. We have the opportunity to reinvent society and catalyze a compassionate, ecologically sound civilization. But will we?

How can you and I do and be what is needed at this moment of chaos? How do we as mindful activists take needed actions while caring for ourselves? How can we practice happiness while being surrounded by multiple threats and experiencing stress and grief?

In my words and deeds, I promote ecological regeneration, gender equality, socioeconomic justice, participatory governance, cultural tolerance, peace and nonviolence, and containment and regulation of AI, bio-engineering, and nuclear weapons through changes in individual mindsets and behaviors and in collective cultures and systems. I support the global-local movement of movements (MOM) that can continue to grow and turn the tide from dystopia toward new possibilities of societal reinvention.

I read, write, publish, speak out on issues, and am interviewed on Zoom, radio, and podcasts. Heart2Heart radio just recorded my reading of poems in my book Earthling Love. In our time of chaos and stress, people need ways to touch truth, beauty, and love that refresh and inspire. This December, Emerald Press releases Applied Spirituality and Sustainable Development Policy written by several authors with my chapter concluding the book.

I help get out the vote (GOTV) for local and national elections and support progressive candidates who are committed to social justice and ecological regeneration. I talk with and care for family members, neighbors, and friends both near at hand and far flung. Here in Western North Carolina, I am dialoging with neighbors in the Swannanoa watershed about creating home veggie gardens, home solar energy, and collaborative arrangements for aging in place.

Expecting increased electrical outages, my wife and I are exploring buying a home backup generator. I wanted to put a solar roof on our house with a backup battery, but the prices are still very high. Maybe if several neighbors do this together, we can get a lower price.

I practice mindful breathing throughout the day and during wakeful moments in the night. I am aware of breathing in and breathing out, in the here and in the now, in love and in gratitude. I exercise, eat healthy food, and try to get eight hours of sleep each night. I honor my grieving of societal, ecological, and personal loss and suffering. I practice gratitude and happiness for the undeserved gift of my life as part of the sublime mystery of life and death. I embrace impermanence and interbeing and vow to relieve the suffering of others and self.

How about you? How are you caring for society, nature, other people, and your own body-mind in this challenging time?

May you and I, and all beings everywhere, realize peace, happiness, understanding, and compassion.

May it be so.

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Note: This is an early October edition of Compassionate Conversations. Since May 2023, an issue has been released on the first of each month. There was also an extra issue in mid July. This issue is coming out before the first of the month. I am now thinking of writing more frequently than monthly, so publications may appear at any time. Thank you for your participation in these conversations! Your comments, questions, and support are deeply welcome.