{"id":15355,"date":"2021-11-17T07:13:24","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T15:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/?p=15355"},"modified":"2022-11-07T11:48:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:48:07","slug":"it-matters-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/radical-joy-revealed\/it-matters-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"It Matters Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>World leaders at the COP26 summit offered up all the appropriate sentiments of alarm and concern about climate change\u2014and failed to take unpalatable actions now in order to forestall a far more painful future. Our governments dally and spin, and we as individuals feel powerless. But does that mean our small actions don\u2019t matter?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Do I really have to shred all this stuff?\u00a0I asked myself as I considered the papers I\u2019d found in an old file cabinet in the attic: 12 years of tax returns from when my late husband was married to his first wife. Shredding would take hours. Still, it seemed unwise to relegate sensitive information to the recycling center. Just this once, I thought, I\u2019ll dump it all in a garbage bag and put it out for trash pickup. Who would know?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Every circumstance forces us to make a decision, and how we decide defines our existence. We are free, as Sartre insisted, to decide anything except not decide. An essential tool for not only surviving ecological crises and our personal challenges, but actually thriving in the midst of them, is to do the things that must be done, simply because we are the ones to do them. This means not only being mindful of how we handle waste and what kinds of food we eat, it also means we make decisions we\u00a0want to live\u00a0with.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Choosing our actions\u00a0also invites us\u2014and in the future will increasingly demand of us\u2014to be generous toward immigrants fleeing unlivable places, to join with diverse neighbors to share stories and create beauty in our challenged communities, to cultivate gratitude and compassion when systems don\u2019t work. Of course it\u2019s sometimes difficult to live by the standards we proclaim, especially when we\u2019re under duress. It\u2019s so much easier to ignore our own best counsel.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Leaders at COP26 got a lot of attention and did little. To thrive through our planet\u2019s future sorrows, we need to do the opposite. We need to take the actions we know are right, even if no one notices. Our actions define who we are. If we deny responsibility or make excuses, we chip away at our integrity and impair our own ability to be courageous, creative, and fiercely alive. We pass up opportunities to connect with others in surprising ways. When we do what we know must be done, we shape the future. What we do matters, whether anyone notices or not.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>(Note: I ended up shredding the old tax returns.)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World leaders at the COP26 summit offered up all the appropriate sentiments of alarm and concern about climate change\u2014and failed to take unpalatable actions now in order to forestall a far more painful future. Our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":23,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"place":[],"event-year":[404],"media-type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15357,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15355\/revisions\/15357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15355"},{"taxonomy":"place","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/place?post=15355"},{"taxonomy":"event-year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event-year?post=15355"},{"taxonomy":"media-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-type?post=15355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}