Remembering Why

Because I have everything to live for.

Because I love nature—the feel of the warm sun and cool breeze, the miracle of green growing things, the softness of little sheep muzzles and ears, the taste of a strawberry seconds from the plant, the sacred intimacy of eating meat which had a name and a full life of joy and the pleasure of sweet pastures, the deep ocean, the dark forest, the sky at night full of stars the city never knows, the free-flying birds who have never tasted pesticides on their meal of bugs and worms, the owls at night in watchful care over the gardens full of tasty voles.

Because I love humans—art, late night talking, the hands skillful at building in straw and clay, the hands skillful in caressing, the lips trembling with tenderness, the prayers to broken stone and living earth and overpowering sky, imagination and play, the passion of the activists, the wild limbs outflung in the dance of Pan, the quiet words in the face of violence.

Because today I fed a yak from the palm of my hand.

Because the oil our whole society depends on is ending, and I don’t know what my life will be like, or the lives of my sister’s children, and I am afraid.

Because the planet is getting hotter, on average, and this means that in every place there will be stranger and stranger weather, and rising sea levels, and food shortages, and spreading disease; because all that I love is out of balance and edging further toward disaster, and I am afraid.

Because I like chocolate and bananas and the Internet and going out to eat and the ease of money, and I cling to these things even though I don’t love them as much as the cool moss and the flowing stream and the leaping salmon and watchful owl.

Because it is increasingly clear to me that I cannot have the fripperies of industrial civilization and global capitalism and also still have redwood trees, wolves, owls, bats, and the night sky untouched by electric light for miles in every direction.

Because I have everything I need right here.

Because a life some might call poverty is not so frightening as watching everything I depend on be ripped away from me, and so I will make a life in which everything I need is right here.

In the soil below me. In the sun above me. In the rain that falls.

Because the rewards and the risks all push me in the same direction. Because the love is a greater force than the inertia.

Because I love my family, my friends, the human people I know, and I want us all to be happy and free from suffering. Because I want all beings to be happy, to know peace, to be free from suffering.

And because it seems the only way to make that happen is to live a life where enough is enough. And because this is for me a far better way to live.