This story was originally published by The Revelator . Subscribe to their newsletter.
One evening last winter, I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on an eight-lane highway. It was rush hour but felt much later, with dark gray clouds hanging low in the sky. Red LED taillights blinked on and off as the traffic inched forward alongside a mass of dirty, day-old snow on the shoulder. Exhaust from the idling cars floated skyward, and I imagined it getting trapped under the low clouds, contributing to the sooty darkness.
Itching to get home, I turned on CBC News, the local radio station. The voice of Dr. Holli-Anne Passmore, associate professor of psychology at Concordia University of Edmonton, cut through the hum of the motor and the neighboring car’s stereo bass.
Passmore recounted how she had spent years studying how to move the needle on emotional wellbeing. Particularly during the winter, she said, many people find themselves struggling with the dreary days and shorter daylight hours. The gloomy suburban landscape through my windshield offered little in the way of contradictory evidence.
Passmore’s research on improving mental states pointed to something extremely simple: noticing nature. In a study involving 395 undergraduate students in Edmonton, and later replicated among 173 undergraduate students in China, she showed that simply taking a moment to truly notice everyday nature (such as a tree on a street corner, a bird pecking at feed, or a squirrel racing along the top of a fence) can trigger feelings of joy, wonder, and gratitude. No sweeping wilderness vistas are required: Participants in her studies reported feeling more satisfaction with life and more connected to nature even in largely urban environments.
It was an appealing idea, though my own relationship with the natural world felt somewhat complicated.
Like many of us, I’ve spent my entire adult life under the shadow of the climate crisis, weighed down and sometimes paralyzed by climate despair. Pursuing a master’s degree in environmental policy at the University of Cambridge only made me feel more hopeless — how could I, an insignificant piece of an extractivist society that seemed hell-bent on self-destruction, ever hope to do anything about it?
While there’s no use in burying one’s head in the sand, there’s also an inherent tension between seeking out knowledge to inform oneself about the climate crisis and the emotional burden that comes with it.
Those who frequently read the news know this feeling all too well. Every day is like watching the ship approach the iceberg, seeing it looming just ahead but having no power to force the captain to chart a different course. It’s a deeply exhausting experience.
Today such eco-anxiety is common. While not a formal medical diagnosis, feelings of fear, rage, and sadness over rapidly rising global temperatures and resulting climatic crises can have significant mental health effects. The impact of eco-anxiety is greatest for young people, but it can affect people of all ages. Though it may sometimes drive positive behaviors such as activism, information-gathering, or efforts to reduce personal environmental impact, all too often it provokes a sense of helplessness.
How, then, can we as environmentalists immunize ourselves against this grief? How can we understand and care about what’s happening to our beautiful planet while still taking care of ourselves?
Passmore’s words lingered in my mind as I pulled into my driveway later that evening. Just inside my front door was my Monstera deliciosa houseplant. While I’d had the plant for a few years and was careful to water it regularly, I had seen it as more of a decorative, static object than a living thing.
But that night I bent down to observe it at eye level and saw a new, light green leaf just beginning to emerge from another stem. Without any intervention or attention on my part, this tiny miracle was taking place in my living room, creating life from sunlight, air, and water.
And so began a habit of truly noticing and marveling at the nature around me.
As the days grew longer and the months grew warmer, I found myself enchanted by dozens of small caterpillars inching across a hiking trail, by the leaves emerging slowly and then all at once from the maple tree on my street, and by the woodpecker that took up residence outside my window and woke me up in the wee hours of every morning. A walk by the lake was no longer solely for the purpose of getting fresh air but also an opportunity to examine the goose and goslings bobbing along beside the rocky shore. A sunny autumn afternoon on my grandfather’s hobby farm left me in awe of the gift of apple trees, heavy with fruit brought forth from the earth.
With this change in perspective came a change in my actions. I began having more positive and hopeful conversations with other environmentalists, felt compelled to donate to new conservation causes, and, perhaps most therapeutically, started writing.
As our planet continues to warm, an ever-greater number of people will be affected by eco-anxiety and environmental grief. However, we as environmentalists can and should combat this. Defending ourselves from environmental grief and apathy by choosing to notice the wonder of everyday nature can not only improve our mental health but also help us reconnect with the world we love so deeply.
Despair is not productive; it prevents us from taking the actions we need to seek change. A recent piece in The Revelator by Rick MacPherson said it well:
“But despair isn’t neutral. It doesn’t just describe reality. It shapes it. Despair hands momentum to the forces counting on our fatigue. To the industries that benefit when we withdraw. To leaders who flourish when we believe we are powerless. It masquerades as honesty. Underneath it is permission — not to feel, but to quit .”
We cannot afford to give ourselves this permission. We regain our power by allowing the wonder of nature to ground us and guide us, to cut through the fog of grief, to inspire our resolve, and to remind us why this matters.
If this simple act can help motivate us to demand something different, count me in — and in the meantime, I’ll be paying close attention to my houseplants.
Previously in The Revelator:
Dr. Green: A Wildlife Researcher Asks About Trauma and Grief
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