Witnessing the Living World

I invite you to read a long-form essay that introduces the philosophy that I am moving to embody. Take some time to sit with a tea and a blanket, maybe, to think about what it could mean for the world if we encouraged more mending.

The evening light filters through the maple leaves outside my window, casting dappled shadows across my desk. A cardinal—brilliant against the green backdrop—alights momentarily on a branch, tilts his head as if in silent inquiry, and then vanishes in a flutter of wings. The world unfolds in countless such moments of exquisite particularity, yet rarely are these moments fully inhabited, fully received. Our attention, that most precious faculty through which we commune with reality, has been systematically fragmented, commodified, and redirected toward screens that glow with urgent insignificance.

In my garden, time passes differently. The gradual unfurling of fern fronds, the patient work of earthworms beneath the soil, and the slow dance of seasons. All proceed at a pace that invites contemplation rather than consumption. Yet beyond this small sanctuary, headlines flash with unrelenting urgency: another hurricane has devastated coastal communities, another species has been declared extinct, and another ecosystem has reached its tipping point. The juxtaposition creates a curious dissonance, a tension between the peaceful immediacy of the living world within reach and the overwhelming complexity of global crises.

'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children,' reminds the oft-quoted Native American proverb. This wisdom echoes in my mind as I take my morning walk, dogs sniffing for news in the bushes we pass. The familiar loop through my neighbourhood brings its usual gifts: Leslie returning from her early morning hike, the excited greeting of fellow walkers, and the satisfying crunch of autumn leaves beneath my feet. As I always do, I pause to pick up discarded packaging along the trail. 'Thank you,' calls Leslie, pausing in her stride. 'Someone needs to care.'

Someone needs to care. The words resonate as I deposit the litter in my recycling bin at home. I am privileged—there's no denying it. My garage houses two cars, my pantry overflows with food, and clean water flows endlessly from my taps. I watched a documentary about water scarcity in the Global South, then ran the dishwasher half-empty because I was too tired to wash the plates by hand. The irony doesn't escape me.

This tension between knowing and doing, between comfort and conscience, represents perhaps the most significant emotional and ethical challenge of our time. One might call it the central paradox of contemporary environmental awareness—the peculiar burden of living with ecological knowledge while participating in systems contradicting one's deepest values. It creates within us what philosopher Glenn Albrecht has termed 'solastalgia,’ a form of existential distress caused by environmental change, a homesickness one feels while still at home.

In my study, surrounded by books articulating the gravity of our planetary predicament, I plan journeys that will inevitably generate carbon emissions. At the supermarket, confronted with endless plastic packaging, I compromise between convenience and conviction. The evening news broadcasts devastating footage of climate-induced disasters, watched from the comfort of a home heated beyond necessity. These contradictions aren't merely inconvenient hypocrisies; they constitute the lived experience of social denial. Our society's structures make genuine environmental alignment nearly impossible.

One recalls T.S. Eliot's prescient observation that humanity cannot bear very much reality. The gap between our ecological understanding and daily actions often proves too painful to keep in consciousness continuously. And so we develop strategic ignorance. Cognitive manoeuvres through which we selectively attend to information, compartmentalizing knowledge that would otherwise demand uncomfortable changes.

Like many, I am caught in that space between knowing and doing, between the world I have and the world I wish to help create. Yet, within this tension lies the possibility of remaining present in difficult realities without succumbing to either apathy or despair. Rather than seeking perfect alignment between knowledge and action—an impossible standard in our complex world, we might instead cultivate a practice of mindful inconsistency, acknowledging our contradictions without allowing them to paralyze us.

How might one person's actions, seemingly insignificant against the backdrop of global environmental challenges, make a meaningful difference? This question has weighed on my heart, a constant companion as I navigate my days, making both big and small choices. I long to leave the world a better place for the generations that will follow, to honour the sacrifices of those who came before, and to fulfil my duty as a steward of this remarkable, fragile planet.

Through years of searching, reading, and observing, I've stumbled upon a simple yet profound truth: the world we seek to mend is not just the global stage but the intimate realm of our lives, communities, and households. Poet Gary Snyder reminds us, "The most radical thing you can do is stay at home." Healing the earth begins not in faraway lands but in the spaces we inhabit, the daily routines we uphold, and the relationships we cultivate.

At the core lies a singular philosophy, at once ancient in its wisdom and urgent in its contemporary application: tread lightly on the earth while living deeply. With deceptively simple phrasing, this proposition reimagines humanity's relationship with the natural world and the inner landscape of consciousness. This dual approach recognizes these seemingly separate domains as complementary aspects of a unified whole.

To tread lightly on the earth is to acknowledge our significant ecological embeddedness: the inescapable reality that we exist woven in an intricate web of natural systems. Unlike the dominant Western paradigm that has conceptualized humans as separate from and superior to 'nature,' this philosophy recognizes what Indigenous wisdom traditions have long understood: that we are not only observers or managers of the natural world but participants in its continual unfolding. Every action, from the food we consume to the energy we harness, from the wastes we generate to the resources we extract, reverberates through complex relationships that extend far beyond our immediate perception.

In practical terms, treading lightly involves a conscious shrinking of our ecological footprint, those measurable impacts our lifestyles impose upon the planet's finite capacities. Yet it transcends resource efficiency to encompass a fundamentally different way of being in the world, one characterized by what philosopher Martin Buber termed the 'I-Thou' relationship rather than the 'I-It' orientation that has dominated modern thought. Where the latter perceives the natural world as a collection of objects to be used, the former approaches it as a community of subjects with whom we might enter into dialogue. It is a realm worthy of reverence rather than exploitation.

The complementary imperative—to live deeply in life—addresses the internal dimension of our ecological crisis. Our environmental predicament stems not only from technological or economic arrangements but from a grave crisis of perception—what philosopher David Abram has called 'the eclipse of the sensuous,' our progressive disconnection from the embodied experience of the living world. To live deeply is to counter this eclipse through the cultivation of presence, attentiveness, and receptivity to the myriad wonders that unfold within and around us at every moment.

This deepening involves what the poet Mary Oliver described as 'the instruction of the world.’ We need to learn to attend not just to human artifice and abstraction but to the ceaseless teachings offered by wind and water, soil and stone, plant and animal. It requires developing 'sensory literacy' to read the subtle languages of the more-than-human world through patient observation and embodied awareness. Through such practices, we begin to experience ourselves not as isolated observers but as participants in the intricate dance of interdependent beings constituting any healthy ecosystem.

These twin imperatives, to tread lightly and live deeply, should not be understood as separate endeavours but as mutually reinforcing aspects of a single approach to existence. As we cultivate a deeper presence in our daily lives, we naturally become more attuned to the ecological consequences of our actions. As we reduce our material impacts, we create the conditions for greater attentiveness to the subtler dimensions of experience. Together, they constitute what might be called a unified field of ethical practice that addresses our outward behaviours and our inner orientation.

The journey towards this integrated way of being might best be understood as a pilgrimage, not towards some distant shrine but into the sacred territory of the present moment and the living earth beneath our feet. Like all true pilgrimages, it involves both outer movement and inner transformation, a simultaneous journey through geographical space and psychological terrain. What distinguishes this ecological pilgrimage from more traditional forms is the recognition that the sacred does not reside elsewhere but here, in the particularity of place, in the mundane miracle of existence itself.

The path unfolds not as a linear progression toward perfection but as a spiral dance of awareness, action, and reflection. Each cycle brings us back to familiar territory with deepened understanding, what T.S. Eliot described as arriving "where we started and knowing the place for the first time." The landmarks of this journey are not monuments but moments of awakening: the startling beauty of a robin's egg discovered on a morning walk, the grief that wells up at the sight of a clear-cut forest, the quiet satisfaction of growing one's own food, the humility induced by geological time scales. Each such experience becomes a signpost and ceremony, a guide and a gift along the way.

This framing of personal transformation as an ecological practice resonates with diverse wisdom traditions. The Buddhist concept of 'interbeing,' articulated by teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, reminds us that "when you plant a tree, you plant yourself.” Our identities extend beyond the boundaries of our skin to include the wider community of life. The ancient Zen practice of 'just sitting' cultivates receptive awareness, allowing us to perceive the world as the very medium of our being. The Quaker's testimony of simplicity connects material restraint with spiritual clarity, suggesting that we see more truly when we consume less voraciously.

What emerges from these traditions is not a prescription for perfect living but an invitation to practices that transform what we know and how we know, altering our way of being in the world. In this light, composting one's kitchen scraps becomes not only a waste reduction strategy but a reintegration ritual; growing a garden becomes food production and a practice of attentiveness; repairing a torn garment becomes an act of thrift and a ceremony of continuity and care. Through this alchemical shift in awareness, the mundane tasks of ecological living become opportunities for cultivating presence.

The Japanese aesthetic tradition of wabi-sabi offers wisdom here, teaching us to find beauty in imperfection and profundity in impermanence. Applied to environmental practice, it suggests that our faltering, imperfect efforts toward ecological living need not be sources of shame but might be understood as authentic expressions of beings trying, however inadequately, to align themselves with a more life-sustaining way of being in the world.

When it first dawned upon me, this revelation was both liberating and daunting. Liberating because it shifted my perspective from feeling powerless in the face of global crises to recognizing the impact I could have within my immediate sphere of influence. Daunting because it challenged me to confront my habits, biases, and blind spots: how I, too, had contributed to the desecration of the world.

I invite you to embark on this journey of personal and planetary mending with me. We shall explore this philosophy of living lightly and deeply—a holistic approach to personal growth and ecological stewardship that transcends the quick fixes and superficial solutions often touted in our consumer-driven world.

At the heart of this approach lies the recognition that our inner and outer landscapes are inextricably linked. The work of personal transformation and environmental stewardship is one and the same, twin aspects of a single process of healing and renewal.

Writer Rebecca Solnit reminds us, "Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky... hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.” While the challenges we face are undeniable—climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation—my message is one of active hope. Every act of mending—no matter how small—contributes to a larger, more just, and sustainable world. As we learn to tread lightly on the earth and live deeply in life, we participate in what cultural historian Thomas Berry called 'The Great Work'—the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

May we undertake this work with humility and courage, recognizing that the mending of the world is not a task we complete. It is a way of being we cultivate, a practice of presence that transforms ourselves and the Earth we call home.

References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Pantheon Books.

Albrecht, G. (2019). Earth emotions: New words for a new world. Cornell University Press.

Berry, T. (1999). The great work: Our way into the future. Bell Tower.

Buber, M. (1970). I and thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Charles Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1923)

Eliot, T. S. (1943). Four quartets. Harcourt, Brace and Company.

Hanh, T. N. (2008). The world we have: A Buddhist approach to peace and ecology. Parallax Press.

Oliver, M. (2004). New and selected poems, volume one. Beacon Press.

Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities (3rd ed.). Haymarket Books.

Please reply to this email to let me know what you think. We are all on a learning path.

-Phronesis- ​

A way of being in the world that shows concern with one’s life, with the lives of others now & in the future and all ways we touch the world.

If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please Unsubscribe here.
If you want to change any information, go here: Preferences​

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, Washington 98104-2246
​