We have spent most of 2019 sealed in our apartment in Sydney, seeking refuge from the acrid smoke that has engulfed much of Australia for months now. It is the only time I’ve felt trapped in this space we call home. We have watched this disaster unfold, both through our windows and screens, fully aware of the fact that we are the lucky ones. We have not had to endure the devastating loss of loved ones, of homes, the trauma of displacement, or of battling perilously against the flames as they devastate entire towns, and decimate other living beings. Our pain is far less visceral, it is the ache of bearing witness to a disappearing world. Archived but not to be lived through again.
A “new normal” is the euphemistic term for this state we are in. The relative stability of the past swallowed by escalating chaos. We must simply adapt and carry on. We must keep the engines of our economies going. As a lecturer, I seek to trace the connective tissue between myopic economic ideology and their devastating consequences to present and future generations. No shortage of writers, scholars, and elders have alerted us to this wicked trajectory. But it is one that I try to outline, out of deep responsibility to young students, with a sense of agency and hope. A conviction, though more strained each year, that we have the collective capacity to end this hubris and turn things around. It is, after all, the interests of but a few that are served by this extractive course we chart. Why would we desire an uninhabitable earth? We cannot be pathologically suicidal. “More just and sustainable pathways are possible for our species, but the masses must demand it!” This has been my refrain for years. Yet as the city of Paramatta disappears in smoke before my eyes, and the ABC flashes scenes of families huddled under a hellish sky on Mallacoota beach, I feel desolate. After years of accumulation, a tipping point has been crossed. A sense of dread ripples through me and my bones ache. Taciturn, I can only think of fading into sleep for some brief respite.
This is not out of a lack of constitution. Having grown up across Sri Lanka and Malawi, brutality, and injustice hardened my heart at a tender age. This eventually formed the foundations fo a resolve to fight for a better future. Yet there is something truly devastating about the age we are in. The rapacity with which a few ransack our planet, can so easily vanquish hope and determination. Especially as the window for change narrows, and the impacts are felt by the most vulnerable. Yet as a leader and an educator, I must confess that I often feel the need (likely self-imposed) to be positive and hopeful, to avoid perpetuating despondency. To provide courses of action. I struggle with this on a daily basis. Especially as I lack the wherewithal to be insincere, even if towards justifiably positive ends. This is one quandry I face as my heart digests the increasingly hostile world that is here before us. But I’m forming the view that it is more important for me to honest. Even if it means unleashing sorrow and having no immediate course of action. To care is to accept the burden of grief. And while grieving, I can carve spaces to care deeply for what remains.
