Being an activist is kind of like being in a sword fight

I’ve heard it said that when people used to duel with swords, they could not get angry or let emotion into their head during the fight, for that was the quickest way to lose the duel – and maybe even die. Ideally their mind would be almost blank, cool and calm, while their body moved in a well-trained rhythm, doing what they had practiced and finding victory.

I have thought for a long time that fighting for any sort of social change is like that.

It is extremely easy to panic about the climate. We are living in truly dark times. It might, indeed, be the end of us – and millions of other species.

It doesn’t NEED to be, but who knows if people will wake up in time or if they will cling to their delusions too stubbornly for humanity to survive?

We are in a fight to the death, and a slip here or there can be our end. So what should we do?

Mental toughness:

1. Do not spend all your time thinking about the environment.
2. Try to find happiness in big and little ways each day.
3. Find things to be thankful for.
4. Cry sometimes.
5. When you hate people (which you will if you focus on how we as a species seem both suicidal and ecocidal), go find a real live person to talk to face to face and maybe do something nice for them. Or let them do something nice for you.
6. Realize that all of us will die at some point, and courage is necessary to live a good life in any era. Learn to laugh at disaster and decide you will defy fate.

Being effective:

1. Conduct your activism in bursts.
2. Decide how much time and emotional energy you can afford to give each week, set it into your calendar, and devote that time wholeheartedly to both catching up on news and to writing letters, making phone calls, networking with other activists, etc. Then TURN OFF and TUNE OUT. If you keep logging into Twitter multiple times a day you will see terrible headlines all day and sink into depression, which keeps you ineffective and paralyzed.
3. If you have no emotional energy at all, your activism should consist of focusing on healing yourself.
4. Never give up your responsibility for personal efforts by throwing money at the problem – your attention and energy and responsibility are vital – but do give wisely and carefully to good organizations or people when you have money available.
5. Learn about relationship boundaries. It does no-one any good to get caught up in an abusive volunteer situation, for example, and to stay there because you think it is necessary for the planet. The planet needs healthy and happy people to show others what is possible.
6. Be kind to your body. Treat it well and get enough sleep as well as good food.
7. Realize you and the planet have enemies. A lot of what is happening is because of greed, but some people also just resent their mortality and don’t want others to go on living after they die. They want to die with the most toys and take all of us with them.
8. Spend some time thinking about tactics, your security, and how people might try to discredit/intimidate/prosecute you in order to shut you up.
9. Do not underestimate the power of small things. Each message you send, each postcard you mail, each time you put up flyers or talk to a family member is doing something and is adding to the whole effort. Let’s cancel the apocalypse!