"Stop the World, . . .

I want to get off!" These words were a mantra for my beleaguered, single mother of five kids, always underfoot. Who could blame her for wanting all the commotion to stop, or else, stopping the world all together, so she herself could get off. Such a powerful thought to speak out loud. It propels one into a kind of magical thinking. What if she, or you, or I could actually get off of this world? Think about that . . .

The world these days, this one and only world we call home, seems more and more to be spinning faster and faster out of control. Imagine if we issued a collective cry to “Stop . . . I want to get off!” Mother Earth herself would sigh with relief. Imagine the quiet that would descend like snow in the night.

In the early days of COVID (remember those strange days?), the planet became a different world. That was the moment when we had an actual chance to change things. I recall one morning thinking that the sun looked different in the way it shone in my study where I write. That wasn’t magical thinking. The air had cleared so quickly because jet planes everywhere were grounded and cars were not driven anywhere. Imagine that! Clearly, the world we inhabit needs our habits to change. We know it’s true, but we engage in magical thinking by telling ourselves that we have time. Why?

I’m not an expert, but I think we come to beliefs by listening to what we want to believe. My mother who believed she could not change the circumstances, gave in once in a while to the pressure by releasing it, like a pressure cooker that releases the built up pressure at just the right moment. Or, else! Believe me when I tell you that a head of steam forcing a weight to fly off the top and hit the ceiling is not a place you want to be standing when it goes the other way. Well, friends, the pressure on our world is very close to hitting the ceiling. We cannot go on collectively believing that there is time and that individually we have no choice but to accept the circumstances: The very circumstances that we ourselves have created! Something’s gotta give. Or, else!

If we use magical thinking to consider how we could change our tune from Stop the World, to Save my World, what would such change look like? A train, bus, or bike ride to work or school? A phone call before a wasted trip in the car? A lot less hot water in a shorter shower? A cloth napkin? A coffee in a real mug? That's just counting on one hand the smallest changes that we can effectively make right now without actually changing our lives. Done together, we can change the circumstances of our life on this one planet. You have ideas of your own on what to do, please share them in the comments below. We will all benefit from sharing and Mother Earth will be relieved of the pressure a little bit while we try to buy the time that we so believe in.