In past posts on this blog I’ve mentioned the Coursera course Learning for Sustainability: Developing a Personal Ethic. We are in the last week of the course and our task for this week is to reflect on what we have learned in the course and consider how our thinking and understanding has developed over the course. These will be marked/graded and there are around 15,000 people taking the course so, understandably, these reflections need to be short (< 400 words). As the course has been quite transformative for me I wanted to have the space to write a longer post here. Some of it will be a repeat of material I posted earlier, but wanted to have a post that summed it up that I could look back on, as well as providing a longer read for anyone in the course who is giving feedback on what I write and is interested in reading more.

My decision to take this course came from the realization that although I think of myself as someone who has a high value for environmental sustainability and social justice, I am not living in a way that is consistent with my values. Although in the past I have been very involved in social justice and environmental movements, and my partner and I live much more simply than most people in North America, over the past few years my life has been very focused on being a breadwinner for my family and I have been working in a job that has little value or meaning to me, coming home exhausted and numbing out with food and TV. After having 3 major surgeries in 6 years, in November 2014 I began experiencing frequent and intense panic attacks and became afraid to leave the house and unable to work. In treatment, an exercise relating to personal values brought into sharp relief the disconnect between what I believe about radical change being needed if we are to continue as a species on this planet and the way I am living, and the impact that has had on my mental and physical health. I am not alone in this; many people are experiencing anxiety about climate change, grief and depression about mass extinctions and biodiversity loss, and other mental health consequences of the harm that we are causing to the planet and each other.

So, from the start this course has been quite personal for me. I hoped it would help me to take a deep and honest look at how to bring my actions into harmony with my belief that we are all responsible to, as I put it in the sustainability definition from Week 1, “live in a way that makes it possible for life to continue — i.e., consuming and creating resources in a balanced way that enables current and future generations (of all species) to get what they need in order to live”. I also hoped that by talking with other people engaged in similar questions I would get some new ideas about things I could do both to change my own life and also work collectively for cultural change. Without diminishing any of the things I do to move towards sustainability, I realized that I have been largely resting on past actions and not continuing to learn or challenge myself. As a result I had become stagnant in the way I was living. My mental health stuckness seemed in some way inextricably tied to this larger stuckness about how to live well and responsibly.

Week 1 – Disruption: Reorienting our Thoughts

With the first Week 1 Assessed Task, “What Did You Have for Breakfast”, as I started writing and doing internet sleuthing about food sustainability I started to feel things unstick. The simple act of writing and discussing with other people was helping get things moving for me. I decided to start this blog to journal about the process of learning to be a stand-up guy again, someone who people can count on to be a force for good.

A few weeks ago I wrote the following about the course: “My favourite part, no surprise, is definitely the discussion forum – anyone who knows me even a teensy bit knows I love to chew things over with other people. And how freakin cool is it to talk about things with people who are literally all over the world. The (voluntarily entered) map of students’ locations shows people from every continent; thus far I have had fascinating conversations with people living in Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Peru, Scotland, South Korea, and USA (and if you take into account where each person came from originally, an even wider range of countries – Brazil, Bulgaria, Liberia, etc.) about food sustainability and what we eat for breakfast, water sustainability, environmental racism, immigration policy and social cohesion with respect to sustainability, re-skilling, and what we each do in our own lives to try to live sustainably. In each of these topic threads there have been many other people chatting, and these are only a few of the several hundred discussions going on between class participants on a very wide range of issues. Pretty cool!” Agoraphobia can be an intensely isolating experience, and to connect with so many people helped me to have more confidence that I could re-engage with the world and have something to offer.

Week 2 – Thinking deeply: Local issues and personal reflections

For the Week 2 Assessed Task, “Identify a Local Sustainability Issue”, I decided to focus on water as although we live in an area that was originally temperate rainforest, deforestation/urbanization, climate change, and other factors are drastically changing the landscape and hence the water cycle and we are currently in a severe drought. As we grow much of our own food the impact of drought is obvious and immediate, and I wanted to use this course as an opportunity to learn more about water sustainability, both on a local level (with changes to our local water supply) and also on a broader scale (with increased interest in exporting local water as a commodity to other areas). I started searching for local people working on water sustainability and started tracking resources to help me find out more about what I can do personally and collectively to work on this issue.

Inspired by the course discussion forum conversations, my partner’s summer photo project, and my partner & a friend’s previous Facebook environmental challenge, I decided to start a “100 Days of Sustainability” project where every day I do something new that is related to sustainability. There can be no repeats, i.e., each day I need to do something that I haven’t already listed as being part of the Sustainability Challenge. I already do a lot of the “50 simple things you can do” type of environmental actions, so in this project I wanted to be creative and think about things I can do that reflect specifics of who I am, where I live, what I value, etc. and that genuinely do stretch me a bit. At the end of each week I write a blog post about what I’m learning, high points, and difficulties.

Week 3 – Understanding broadly:  Global issues and wider positioning

For the Week 3 Assessed Task, “Causes and Consequences Tree”, I mapped out the causes and consequences of drought (shortage of useable water). In my past environmental/social justice work I haven’t done work on water sustainability so this was a good stretch for me and a great exercise in starting to see patterns, connections, and interconnections. It also helped me see how many opportunities there are for positive change, and to think about some of the positive changes I could make. As one of my Sustainability Challenge actions this week I did some sleuthing on ways to conserve water and made list of ideas for future actions relating to water sustainability, so I lots of ideas for future weeks of the Challenge. I also signed a petition against my provincial government’s agreement with various commercial water companies, including Nestlé, permitting them to take local groundwater for access rights of $2.25 per million litres and then resell it at a huge profit.

My other Sustainability Challenge actions for this week included:

• Food: Returned to being vegan after a few months of eating dairy and eggs in large quantities. I also did some work around quantity of food as I tend to overeat and, while not wanting to participate in shaming/fatphobic body image nonsense equating being fat with being greedy, do feel that for me personal honesty around my own over-consumption is an important aspect of considering sustainability.

• Experimenting with looking at everything from a “I have enough” mentality. I am often anxious and can easily get caught up in feeling that I don’t have enough ____ (time, money, food, happiness, information, meaning etc.) and racing around trying to get more of whatever I feel I am lacking. I lived on welfare for a number of years so know that truly not having enough is painful, but this is not a real issue in my life now so it is just a mental thing, fuelled largely by mainstream consumerism, including a culture of entitlement and belief in deserving more than what realistically is one’s fair share. It was interesting to see where and how I had a mentality of being scared to miss out, feeling deficient and that I have to take everything I can now or it will be too late.

• Learning more about the environmental and social justice impacts of mining, as part of thinking about whether “green” technology is actually sustainable and the role that metal plays in my life. This was prompted by a couple discussion forum posts, but coincidentally also read a beautiful novel by Ishmael Beah called “Radiance of Tomorrow” that I didn’t know would include a story line about the impact of foreign-owned mining company on the village in Sierra Leone where the novel is set – powerful and lots to think about. Also a good spark for me around thinking through the difference between harm reduction type activities and truly sustainable/desirable activities, and how high metal “renewable” energy infrastructure like solar panels, wind turbines, etc. fits in my vision of a sustainable future.

• Did a brief presentation for the board of my neighbourhood association as part of inviting them to sponsor a screening of the film The Good Life, The Green Life as part of an attempt to build connections with other folks in my neighbourhood who are interested in working on sustainability and environmental/social justice.

Week 4 – Implement: How do we take action?

This week the course included a video on the sociology of laundry practices that I found quite thought-provoking, and this sparked some exploration in my Sustainability Challenge about water sustainability and bathing. In addition to turning off the water while lathering and generally trying to have shorter showers, this week I also caught water from warming up a shower and used it to wash dishes, which was a simple action but involved a lot of resistance to carrying a bucket around the house. I also deliberately didn’t shower one day of the week, in part to look a bit deeper at what personal and societal expectations about “cleanliness” are really about (as per the course video). I also learned more from discussion threads this week about environmental issues relating to companion animals and ways to support government initiatives relating to energy efficiency in buildings. We always pick up our own dog’s poop but having learned more about the widespread negative environmental impacts of dog poop on multiple species, on our daily dog walks I started using our dog’s poop bag to pick up as much dog poop as possible, and my partner and I are looking into making food for our cats using local sustainably harvested fish. Other specific Sustainability Challenge actions included cycling instead of taking the bus, finding out more about what I can do to support my municipal government’s food sustainability initiatives, and meeting with a local organization to find people interested in working on climate change at a neighbourhood level.

The course’s task for Week 4, Circles for action, involved drawing a small circle inside a large circle, and in the large circle writing down all the actions that could be done on your chosen topic (mine = drought) and then in the smaller inner circle what you feel you could have influence over. When I went back to my drought diagram from Week 3 to look at all of the identified causes and think about what could be done to impact all of those causes, I could not think of any human-influenced causes that I could have zero influence on. Even big-picture global issues such as climate change, deforestation, and multinational agribusiness, or systemic local issues such as harmful and weak national, provincial, and municipal laws, are things that I feel I can take action on and have some influence over while not having control of the outcome. This sparked an interesting discussion with my partner about the differences between our families of origin and the privileges I have from growing up in a politically active family where from a young age we were taught that we have the power to change things, and also learned skills for how to work for change.

This week there were also seismic shifts relating to the questioning around what I’m doing with my life and clarifying how to live in a way that allows me to most fully offer myself to the world, to make the biggest difference and be of service. I realized that I need to make some big changes at work, at home, in my marriage, with my family and friends, with my spiritual community, really in every area of my life. This is super scary, but after 8 months of being totally ruled by panic and terror, it is scarier to not change than to change.

Up until this point in recovery I thought that with so much going on in my head, the best thing would be to get as much safety/security as possible under my feet by keeping things as much the same as possible and only very cautiously and gradually trying to work in anything new. Taking this approach, my recovery from agoraphobia did not have much forward progress; I remained mostly stuck. But as I started to get clearer on what it would look like for me to feel there is integrity between my values and actions, I started to regain integrity of self. And with that I understood that it’s actually not in my best interests to try to get the old ground under my feet again. Instead, I need to take a leap of faith that if I let go of the things that don’t feel true to my vision of who I want to be in the world, there will be space for something else to emerge and whatever that is will be OK. Since that mental shift, the agoraphobia is completely gone and I have not had any panic attacks.

Change and all the new possibility it brings can be exciting for the person going through it, but pretty hard on everyone else. After 8 months of supporting me through intense mental health stuff, which has not only been my suffering but also very stressful for the people who love me, it is understandably hard to trust that I am in my right mind to be making big life decisions, or that I will be able to sustain the energy to see through making big changes. Ah, there’s that word, sustain…And then of course there is also the aspect of interconnectedness. Me changing my life doesn’t just change my life, it also changes things for my partner, parents, friends, colleagues, and everyone else who’s life is tied up with mine. What is the responsible way to deal with that? None of us can live our lives for other people, but we also can’t disregard the impact we have. And how to explain the changes to people in a way that doesn’t come across as some kind of judgment/shaming about the way other people live their lives, or a rejection of what brings someone else joy?

I have been a practising Zen Buddhist for many years and like all tough life questions this feels like a Zen koan of sorts. I am a total novice with koan practice, but from what I know thus far, koans can’t be solved by thinking intellectually about something — you have to let the question/challenge of the koan really burn within you and then show your understanding/insight through what you do. So, sustainability as a koan. What does it mean to live in a way that is sustainable, that is authentic and that has integrity. Demonstrate!

Week 5 – Learning for sustainability: How can we inform and educate others?

As this course comes to a close I have been thinking about next steps. My 100 day Sustainability Challenge will be continuing until mid-October and to help keep me on track with that I was searching for another structured opportunity to learn, reflect, and challenge myself both to take action in my own life and also share what I am learning with other people. The “Story of Solutions” video that was part of the week 5 curriculum came at just the right time and I am now registered for the filmmakers’ 4-week Citizen Muscle Boot Camp, “designed to get each of us flexing our Citizen Muscles and building the skills we need to make change in our communities”. I have also reconnected with my Zen Buddhist community after a long absence, to provide the spiritual foundation I need to be healthy in doing this work, and will be starting in September a Buddhist course on developing our community’s capacity to effectively engage on climate change and other ecological challenges, both thematically and locally, with courage, compassion and wisdom. The course includes working in small regional groups to collaborate on joint projects and support each other to take action, so will provide many opportunities for informing and educating others. Last but not least, I will not be returning to my job, and with the support of my partner am applying for part-time social justice/environmental jobs to do work that feels more meaningful and also free up time to contribute more to grassroots community efforts for positive change, as well as the ongoing self-care I need to stay healthy.

This course has been richly rewarding for me and I am very grateful to have had the chance to participate and learn from everyone in it. Hopefully it will be offered again so I can recommend it to friends and colleagues interested in these issues!