Passionate Sustainability

A few years ago, I was standing in front of an art gallery named Hang looking at a rectangular piece hanging in the window. Half of the rectangle was a mélange of cheerful colors with a couple of words, including “desire”; the other half was a chalkboard with the heading "Goals for 2004," followed by several possibilities written in chalk.

I went inside to take a closer look. At the sales clerk’s urging, I erased the previous list and wrote in my own goals. Study Japanese. Make Art in Santa Fe. Visit Mongolia. Live a Life of Passion. I went outside to look at my handiwork. Somehow, seeing it there in black and white, with random passersby and my 20something son as witnesses made the list seem more real. “What do you mean by living a passionate life?” my son, Michael, asked. At the time, I didn’t really know what I meant; I only sensed the absence of desire. Desire as the yearning, the spark, that leads to passion, not only physical but also metaphorical. In a word, I was depressed.

In the years that followed, I stepped away from the path which others expected me to take and onto the path of following my own heart. Like the yellow-brick road, this path is sometimes bright and other times faint. It has taken me through dangerous territory, places where angels fear to tread, and into moments not only of despair but also of ecstasy.

In walking this path, I have questioned, again and again, what my life’s purpose might be and how I can make a difference to both humans and non-humans. What, if anything, can I do to end the destruction of the environment? How do I act from my understanding that we—you, me, this tree, that bird, those bees, the stars-- are all interconnected in a web of life when I live in a culture that considers stars to be dead matter and values only some people (and their companion animals)? Is it possible to live a life of passionate sustainability, to live in a way that does not damage the ability of future generations to sustain themselves, without disengaging from society altogether?

But lately, in thinking about the link between passion and sustainability, I have come to wonder if it is possible to live a sustainable life, at least in the industrial world, without passion? I would argue that the answer might well be no. Without passion, where will we get the energy to protect the natural world, of which we are a part? Without a desire for something different than the current system, where will we get the will to engage in the struggle, to act differently, to not be sheep following the path of complicity with corporate greed and governmental deceit? Without the support of other passionate people, how can we endure and overcome the feelings of helplessness, the fears that we may be doing too little too late to save even our own grandchildren, not to mention countless other species? Without passion, how can we survive?