This photo is as nonsensical as the world seems to me these days. Except that the frogs, looking up the way they do, express something of the naiveté I feel I have been living within when it comes to my expectation of the unwavering persistence of the planet.
My 7-year-old son and his friend made the frog house and took the picture last year. A year ago - when I was just beginning to come to terms with the facts and the figures and the devastating reality of what humans are doing to the planet. Don't get me wrong, my entire life has been informed by the understanding that human pollution, in its many forms, is causing damage to our waterways, our air and our ozone. And I have, since I was in my teens, been aware of subtle shifts in weather patterns. When I say "coming to terms," I mean that I finally realized, as many of us have, that we must change the way we live and that we cannot count on governments or elected officials to work toward the systemic changes that are imperative in owning up to and acting upon the drastic transformation necessary to protect life on our planet. Not only because governments and elected officials won't enact change but because they are strongly motivated to deny that change is necessary.
So that means it is up to us, me and you, to formulate and enact transformation within the context of a system and a culture that has a great deal invested in resisting that change. The US government, wrapped up as it is within the cocoons of power and profit, stands in the way of change and pursues a perilous denial of climate change that it inflicts upon us. So, we can simply wait for more devastating learning opportunities to be delivered to us by the planet itself - in the forms of drought, hurricanes and tsunamis - or we can get to work. This is not a joke. This is not a nonsensical illusion of terror, though being terrified is surely an important part of it. This is real. This is a final call to action, before it's too late.
So, yes, "Yop!"
Except that to call out "Yop!" like Dr. Seuss's Jojo implies that if I were to do so, there is some chance that someone out there might hear. And perhaps I do entertain that thought. To be honest, I do, yes, I entertain the notion and court the hope that if enough people start "Yopping!" the insanity of business-as-usual politics and business-as-usual lifestyles will cease and desist and we will all get to work - together - on reversing what may already be irrevocable. It is my intention to try anyway, because if extreme weather patterns and drastic austerity measures are all that is in store for us in the coming years, we're going to need each other. I'm thinking we're going to find something within ourselves, within our humanity, that has been lost in the quest for material comfort and individual triumph.
The truth is, I've got a lot of skin in the game. I've got three beautiful children whose futures I care about deeply. And, with them, I expect to live fully and joyfully and purposefully while grappling with the truth of our present reality. So, I'm going to be expressing my journey here -- my thoughts, my worries, my fears, my questions. And, with any luck, some answers to the challenges we face.
I hope you'll join me.
Yop!
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