We are now faced with a very big problem to solve: namely Climate Change. Compassion for Life discusses the emotion self-compassion which is defined as the urge to ease one’s own suffering. There are many ways that climate change is starting to negatively affect each of us. We, both as individuals, and collectively, are starting to pay much closer attention to how significant this negative impact actually is.
On the individual level, this close attention is akin to us having self-compassion for ourselves. In fact, it truly is us having self-compassion. We are beginning to individually see how climate change is causing suffering for ourselves, and that personally we have a vested interest in coming up with a solution.
Additionally, people appear to be having more discussions with each other about how much of a negative impact it has on them. People also seem to be coming up with more ideas for solving it: both what they can do as individuals, and what they can do together. I have also noticed that these ideas appear to be discussed between people more and more often, and in open settings. It is these types of discussion seeds, namely grass roots efforts, that provide the momentum to potentially grow into efforts of very large numbers of people wanting to solve the problem at hand.
The grass-roots efforts of the Gorham Climate Change Group is indeed a great example of such a group. Their ideas are truly the seeds that can potentially grow into a large movement of people who can provide the political will, to make great things happen… And it all starts with two people discussing a shared problem with each other. By sharing self-compassion and compassion at the same time (sharing compassions), which is described in detail in my book, they naturally produce ideas about how to work together to make the situation better and potentially solve the problem. Perhaps Compassion for Life has a good chance at helping to foster discussions about our shared problems, specifically here Climate Change. Such discussions may then help us generate, individually and together, new ideas for possible solutions: both faster, and with more input from those affected directly by the problems. I believe Compassion for Life is indeed worth considering as a tool to foster those very discussions. It is my hope that it will help us.
[Excerpt taken from my full book presentation to be given at a later time.]
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