Photo of the Month: May 2022

Aging, Solastalgia, & Crossroads

The lines and curves carved into the water of this photo of the month reminded me deeply of aging – not just of human aging, but the cyclical waning and waxing of nature itself. Sometimes aging is viewed as a setback, as a thing to detest or fear. But aging is just another aspect of life, a decomposition of matter to nurture younger material.

There’s a type of stereotype of seniors or elders lamenting about the “good old days”, telling tales of journeys and experiences lived in a life full of years. Often times we condescend these people and their stories, building up a barrier of ignorance or blatant apathy for the past. But our past can tell a lot about our present and future, and it’s important to recognize the wisdom of our elders. They, too, might be experiencing solastalgia, a grieving loss, for the world that no longer is.

I mentioned in my post Zungunruhe that I read Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, a collection of stories and essays written in her vibrant, verdant voice. In one of her essays, Macdonald describes the term solastalgia This word was created by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in his book Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Identity, published in 2003.

The root of solastalgia is sōlācium, Latin for comfort, solace, relief, and algia, pain, grief, suffering. It describes the sense of utter loss and remorse from environmental change, usually human-caused.

Solastalgia is the abysmal, depressive hole that fills many of us with mourning grief for an earth that once was. In Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, she writes that her solastalgia was witnessing the human-made development of a wild meadow in adulthood where she had once explored and ventured as a youth. My solastalgia is not so much a mourning of what was but a mourning of our resistance to changing our ways as people. Seeing the clearcuts and slash piles and towering logging trucks hauling scarred, raw trees is sometimes too much to bear. I feel that everything is too much – we take too much and expect too much to be given, again and again.

Right now, the earth is experiencing all sorts of disruption and trauma. We as humans have come to a point where we’re all standing at a major crossroads, a junction of fate. There are two paths to take: the one of no return where we continue digging our own graves, wounds cut deep into the geosphere of the earth; or the one where there’s that fragile seed of hope and renewal, a chance to change our ways of consumption.

The constant messages of doom really do make an impact on people. There’s a part of me that wants to just give up; to shake hands with too much and ignore the forest fires and construction and clearcuts and contaminated waters. It would be easy, I think. I don’t have any skin in the game, really.

But I do.

The truth is, we all live on this earth. We all have a home somewhere on this blue-green planet, and we all eat and drink and love and sorrow and anger. We all have a bit of responsibility to do our parts, and it’s up to us individuals to decide what that means.

Climate change is a natural part of the earth’s cycles, and especially after earth day, I definitely find myself grateful to live on a planet we can call home. But I feel we need to take better care of this refuge, this sanctuary. It’s ultimately up to us to choose the path we desire, and I hope that the path we take at this crossroads recognizes our intense vulnerability at the pace we’re going.

Taking care of the earth is a way of taking care of ourselves, but honestly, nature will always find a way. It’s up to us, however, to decide whether we carry that resiliency and wellbeing into our own communities. If we listen to our elders, listen to the earth, listen to deeper meanings, much can be understood about where we are and where we’re going.