Last night, my friend Mallory hosted a small gathering — seven beautiful people sprawled around a table made of cardboard boxes, topped with a towel. We ate fajitas and talked about the future. I hadn’t met everyone before and when I left, sometime after 11, I realized that I hardly even knew the people I had known. You know?
We each talked about what’s true to us. Extreme empathy, visions of peace, a desire to give, a desire to protect, dreams of changing the culture and improving education, the wisdom of nature, the restorative power of art, finding ourselves and helping others do the same. Every story grounded itself in love. We love life and we want everyone to enjoy the same feeling. Mallory tagged it a “Whistler Society,” inspired by the Falling Whistles campaign. She asked each of us to share something life-affirming.
I read exerpts from Derrick Jensen’s essay “Beyond Hope”:
PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.
Thank you, friends, for laying bare your passions. Such naked, fearless honesty will give us agency over the future. Let’s keep talking — louder and more often.
Comments (2)
Hello, Tina. Just a note from an “Old Person”. The existence of people like you and your friends gives me hope. For the longest time, the “young people” I saw were for the most part ignorant, caught up in their own video game lives, and never looked outside of their tiny little sphere. thanks for giving us old people a glimpse into young lives that are thoughtful, compassionate, wise and beautiful.
The sun has barely come up and I have been moved to tears this morning by the link to Falling Whistles.
Tina, man what a beautiful post! Thank you for telling me about it.
I SO enjoyed what you had to share the other night, and The Future of Nature is officially on my list.
We’re a rag tag bunch, but we have ideas and that’s all that matters.
And thank you to Tina’s friend. I worked for Falling Whistles last season and recently got back to Columbia. Starting a Whistler Society is what I know I’ve got to do to keep the conversation alive and ideas flowing.
Thank you for your kind words! The world is changed by those who speak out.
Love,
Mallory