Moving into spring semester: lessons learned from a thoughtful winter break

The second day of classes at UC Berkeley has passed already, and the whirlwind of lectures, clubs, meetings at Cafe Milano, yoga classes, and nights spent emailing and google doc-ing have begun.

I am entering this semester after a winter break filled with self-reflection. I am entering this semester after organizing and collaborating at the CSSC leadership retreat. I feel that both of these pieces of my break will help define who I become by the time May rolls around.

Pacific Ocean, San Francisco

First: self-reflection. Because I spent two full weeks at home, and one week traveling to New Mexico, my brain shifted gears with the change of pace. I was lucky enough to have been given David Abram's book, Becoming Animal. This book punched me in the gut... in an exhilarating way. I read about humankind's lost relationship with the natural world, how we don't communicate with rocks or ravens anymore, how we no longer experience spirituality in grasses and forests and thunderstorms. It hit me while reading that much of what he was saying resonated with me. Well, rather, it resonated with five-year-old me. Abram's words allowed a flood of memories and feelings to come rushing back to me - throwing washed up jellyfish on the beach back into the ocean, talking to birds, crying for animals, feeling a fierce passion for the animal world, for nature, for non-humans. I remembered the me that would rather talk to a sparrow than a person.

It hit me that in embracing "environmentalism" and the "sustainability movement" I had started to leave a part of me behind. It has felt so good to work with other people, to be part of something big, to feel included and powerful, that I have begun to forget what motivated me in the first place. I have taken on the rhetoric: that we're stopping climate change to save ourselves and our civilization, that we're going to fix communities and the economy by creating green jobs. Rhetoric that appeals to the masses. But I have started to use it so much, that I am losing sight of my own values, my own morals, my own sense of justice.

That's not to say that I cannot grow. Oh man, have I grown since I started doing "environmental work" - and I don't regret that growth in the least. I have learned about the interconnectedness of issues like food and energy, about different means of problem solving, about the complexity of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

I think the challenge is to keep growing without losing sight of what brought me onto the path in the first place. I can acknowledge the beauty in the impressive array of perspectives in the movements I am a part of, and acknowledge my own unique place in that array as well. It's important to remember that we all come from somewhere - I come from a past with its own set of experiences and privileges, prejudices and truths.

The CSSC retreat showed me how beautiful it is when people have their heart and soul invested in an organization and a cause. Put 50 college students in a cabin in the woods, and you expect a whole lot of partying, sleeping in, and hanging out. But put 50 "sustainabilibuddies" from the CSSC in that situation, and you get the partying, but you also get meaningful conversations, consensus-based decision making, organizing, and campaign planning.

CSSC Winter Leadership Retreat. Tia Tyler.

Investment. We are all willing to put in the leg-work because we all feel like this organization is ours, like the cause is ours, like our dreams are on the line and our visions are being played out right before our eyes. That attachment requires that our hearts are in in it - and that means staying true to ourselves, or rather, the children in us, who first felt like this was something worth fighting for.





And so, going into these next four months, in which I will be planning, and speaking, and organizing, and writing, and inspiring, I feel I am prepared to grow and learn while staying true to the nature-loving, animal-talking, mountain-girl who I know I will always be.

Me in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Humboldt