Week #2 was pretty eventful. The actions/themes this week have been two-fold — like last week, I did some stuff specifically relating to environmental sustainability, on the following topics:

• Water: Further looked at how I bathe (last week mentioned turning off water while lathering and trying to have shorter showers) – this week I 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. (This was a topic this week in the Coursera sustainability course, looking at laundry practices and expectations about how clean clothes should be, and how that reflects cultural values, available technology, etc.)
• Transportation: For one longish round trip (21k) I rode my bike as transport instead of taking the bus.
• Building relationships for collective action: I contacted our municipality’s sustainability coordinator to encourage linking to the current City of Victoria food security initiative and offering to volunteer to help with something similar in Saanich; met with the Pie Project coordinator to try to connect with other local folks interested in working on climate change at a neighbourhood level; and went to the Zen open house at UVic for the first time in a while (to start to reconnect with my sangha).
• Critters: This week there was a discussion thread in my Coursera sustainability course about companion animals and I was interested to learn more, so did research on environmental impacts of companion animals and posted to the course discussion forum things we can do to reduce the environmental impacts of keeping animals as pets – and also wrote some thoughts about the ethics of domesticating animals, and the long-term ethical sustainability of this practice. It was quite sobering to learn more about the environmental impacts of dog poop, especially the impact on marine animals; and also to learn more about the critter food industry and think about how best to feed the critters that we are responsible for.

Underneath all of that, there were seismic shifts relating to the questioning I mentioned last week 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. On the first day of Challenge Week #2 I realized that I am not living the life I want to live, that the life I had pre-breakdown wasn’t working, and that I need to make some big changes at work, at home, 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.

I think everyone reading this already knows this, but just in case not, for the past 8 months there has been an intense battle in my head between disparate aspects of who I am, with increasing disunity and fragmentation. Earlie 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 has been very hit and miss, with not a lot of forward progress. I have been quite 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. The kaleidoscope shifted and the parts that had been separated came together in a new configuration. 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 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?

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!

P.S. The match that lit the fire for all this stuff this week was two books by Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro and its predecessor The War of Art. Both are available from the Greater Victoria Public Library, although Turning Pro has to be requested through an interlibrary loan. These are AMAZING books and I highly, highly recommend them. Truly life changing for me! Looking forward to reading his 3rd book in this series, Do the Work (yay for interlibrary loans).