I've been really sick. I love this island. I love this ocean. I love the people and the cross-connections of cultures and worldviews and foods and thoughts and languages. I love the climate. I love the weather. I love the plants and birds that I had never seen or maybe even heard of before. I love it here. I really do. I should be so lucky to live here.
But with all good things comes a cost. The price of admission. A woman from Kauai I once met, a conservationist and activist. Her house floods in the rainy season. Things become ruined and time is always spent to maintain her home as well as her environment. That is the price of living in paradise.
My family is far away. Time zones separate us, and expense, and plane rides. That is a price to be here. Five years ago it was a temporary cost, but now that I am more and more rooted... who knows?
Hawaii has made me sick. More specifically, Kilauea, the volcano on the Big Island that has been actively erupting since the mid-eighties, has made me sick. Over the past six years, I have developed sinus and respiratory problems from the vog. Since December, this illness has kept me home thrice, hacking and wheezing and burning in my sinuses and lungs. The first time I wound up in the emergency room. This is no small price. This past week has been really bad. One day the pain alone brought me to tears twice. When I get this sick, I feel depressed and worthless. I somehow convince myself that I'm lazy. Like that the reason I'm not working is because I just don't feel like it. In truth, I'm not working because I physically can't. That's a difference. I know this in my brain. I'm getting off topic. The point is, this is a high price. And even after this really bad week, I find that I am still willing to pay it.
I love the Pacific. I love my work in Tuvalu. I love my work with Pacific RISA. This is what I want to do when I grow up, and what do you know? I get to do it. I should be so lucky.
Being sick, I become introspective. What else is there to do? Being sick is boring. So I think. Yesterday, I talked to my younger sister on the phone and we talked about climate change and how bad it might be and what does it mean for our future generations and what can we do now?
The short answer is that individually, we must act. Make changes in our own lives, in our mindsets, in our expectations. That is necessary. But it is not enough. As a society, as a planet, we must also act. We must change everything. It won't be easy and it won't be quick. This is a long haul sort of need. It won't be finished in my lifetime. But it must start.
We have mealybugs in our garden. And inch worms. Caterpillars. They eat our kale. Little bastards. Well, really I can't blame them. I eat our kale too. We're competing species, you know. The fight for the kale. Who wins? That changes almost daily. Yesterday morning, armed with a mug of isopropyl alcohol and a handful of q-tips, I went on a quest to assert my claim to the kale. The mealybugs were worse that I had realized when I made this plan. Dozens of leaves in our small garden-- maybe even a hundred. Some of them, their undersides were completely coated with the white little buggers.
I felt overwhelmed. God, where do I even start?
And then I answered myself-- somewhere.
And so I started. Spent who knows? An hour? Leaning over the leaves, squatting under the leaves, painting them in tiny little q-tip lines of alcohol. And even after all of that, they're still there. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But this morning, I looked again, and they're still there. Leaves I missed. Leaves I got. They persist. Because that's how it goes.
This morning, thinking again about climate change and what to do in my own life. I feel I'm one up because it is actually my job to deal with climate change. So already I spend a lot of my time at it. But there's so much more to be done. So much more that I could be doing. The energy I use on this laptop. Driving to work. Eating food that has been shipped from God knows where. The things I have, that were made. The house I live in. The society I operate in. There is so much to address. So much to do. So much to change and fix and solve and think on and worry about and figure out. God, where do I even start?
But the mealybugs already answered that question. Start somewhere.
I've known so many activists, so many causes. There are so many bad things out there. There are so many good things that are being done, that are yet to be done. I see sometimes people (myself included) getting frustrated with others for not taking up their cause. But we all have our causes. We all have the things we do. These are good things. These are all necessary. There is too much for any one person to do it all. A person literally does not have the time and the energy to do all that is necessary. But if we get overwhelmed with the scope of this reality, we can get lost and stagnant. We can fail to even begin.
So this is my answer. At least for today.
Start somewhere. It will never be everything. It will never be enough. But to begin is sufficient. To act is the point.
And together, just maybe, we'll get closer. Together, just maybe, we'll get there.
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