The Climate Crisis and the Will To Live

 

 

Our “will to live” is strong!

It has helped many to overcome huge obstacles: Ask anyone who has lived through a battle with disease, has overcome massive injury, has gone through a major surgery, or has dealt with emotional trauma.

Many of those who have courageously battled serious disease can tell you that the will to live is even stronger than hope.

Even when hope is gone, the will to live endures.

Also, our “will to live” can counter fear.

It can deal with that fear obstacle even when the fearful facts that we face are about the very real threat of the climate crisis, which threatens to end all of humanity, and which threatens to do so through a period of massive, human suffering at an unimaginable scale.

Our will to live can counter even that fear.

Our will to live is strong enough to face even that crisis.

In fact, it wants to face that crisis…

… because facing that crisis is one of the things we need to do to continue to live.

In the climate crisis, just as in some other life crises, facing the truth is the first step towards life….

…And our will to live is strong!

In the case of someone battling disease, "facing the truth" involves facing an accurate diagnosis: Regardless of how unsettling that diagnosis can be, the fact that it is accurate will help the situation, not hurt it.

The same is true of someone dealing with emotional crisis and trauma.

Just as in some other life crises, in the climate crisis, the "will to live" is even stronger if it is a combined “will to live” among many people.

Our collective "will to live" is strong: We are more powerful together.

The "will to live" uses courage to look the truth straight in the eyes regardless of how scary that truth can be.

Just as in some other life crises, in the climate crisis, courage, too, can exist in the absence of hope.

Courage is contagious.

Just as in some other life crises, in the climate crisis, it is hard to imagine courage without action.

Just as in some other life crises, in the climate crisis, action increases hope.

Just as in some other life crises, in the climate crisis, action is an expression of the will to live.

We can express that "we want to live" by acting. 

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