Part-Time Crusaders

At first glance Wendell Berry’s pronouncement, “Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts,” may seem at once a puzzling oxymoron and at worse a call to willful blindness, ignorance of the worst order. I thought, “how dare someone consider the devastation of our current environmental crises and not work to her fullest extent possible to mitigate this damage.” I declared we all must partake in the great turning of our society to a more eco-conscious economy, an endeavor, which is difficult and meaningful, but not usually associated with joyfulness. To me, joyfulness traditionally connotes being carefree and pursuing ones source of joy, even if that source is not directly serving the furtherance of some greater cause, say the battle to pass a global climate agreement.

And then over time I began to realize the divorce in the lives among many environmentalists and often my own life, of sustainability as we apply it to our work in the environmental field and sustainability as it applies to our lives. In essence, an environmentalist cannot promote sustainable practices for soil but not apply these basic principles of environmental sustainability- slowness and receptiveness and compassion for the needs of the land and people, to her own life as it manifests in the need for adequate rest or participation in activities that are unrelated to ones environmental work, but bring her happiness in a way that enables her to sustain her joyfulness so as to avoid becoming a burnt-out activist. Just as Berry describes the unsustainability inherent in the  “separation” of the different elements of a farm and its ecological and economic environment so is the separation of our lives from the multitude of diverse activities that sustain us unsustainable. Therefore, Berry’s statement, to borrow the words of Michael Pollan in the intro, prove “perfectly obvious and completely arresting” in their insistence that joyfulness- a product of personal sustainability, is perhaps our greatest tool in light of all the facts because it allows us to accomplish and approach our work in a way that enables us to act in the direction these facts demand to the fullest extent we are able for the longest time.

Edward Abbey discusses this point beautifully:

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”