Why Gratitude Is a Climate Strategy
It's about life, not just carbon
As we explore the Climate Abundant Life, all dimensions of life are included. It’s not just about the cost-benefit analysis of electric chainsaws, as I laid out in the previous post. It is also about who we are, how we think, and our relationship to the world, ourselves, and each other. It is about how we experience abundance or scarcity, how we allow that attitude to dominate our lives, and how it changes our perceptions of the earth, the economy, and the world we live in.
I have carried that awareness into my reading of a wonderful book first published in 2013 called Braiding Sweetgrass. The author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, is a scientist, professor, and member of the Potawatomi Nation. The book is a splendid blend of indigenous wisdom and scientific understanding without tipping into sentimentality or logical positivism—a rare achievement in the literature on nature and climate. Lovely book.
About a third of the way into the book is a section she calls “Allegiance to Gratitude,” in which she recounts and comments on the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga people. The section is a virtual ode to gratitude, but what caught my eye was the way her reflection on this speaks to our longing for a Climate Abundant Life.
“You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical idea. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.”
In this passage, Kimmerer is talking about the effects on the economy, but I would like to point to the inner effects of gratitude—feeling wealthy, experiencing abundance in your day, and coming into a sense of flow with the world. Our inner state often guides, or even drives, our outer behavior.
Gratitude isn't a revolutionary idea only because of its effect on the economy; it is revolutionary for you and me. Gratitude changes our sense of abundance, and in so doing, can change our relationship with the world and our own lives. Sure, we will buy less stuff, but the contentment we experience is the real revolution. It is there, inside our hearts and minds. The characters within who scream all day and all night that they don't have enough must take a back seat while we bask in gratitude for all that we do have. And this gratitude is what changes our lives.
Since gratitude is a precursor to the experience of abundance, there can be no Climate Abundant Life without it. That’s because the abundance is missing. Abundance requires neither a great accumulation of things or wealth, nor the jettisoning of the stuff of life to achieve some austere goal of doing with less. What it requires is gratitude for what we have, right now, in this moment.
What Kimmerer is saying is that the practice of gratitude will change the inner landscape of your spirit. Gratitude becomes the experience of abundance and therefore changes your satisfaction with life. You begin to realize how much you have, that you are well cared for, that you can live well, right now, today.
It is hard to see how anyone could achieve a climate abundant life without this shift. Ultimately, we need to see it, recognize it, be grateful, and live it.
Gratitude is not always easy. Those of us concerned about climate can easily fall into fear and catastrophic thinking. It is hard to hold gratitude in that space. When world events are disastrous to so many, as in fires, great floods, severe droughts, and major heat waves, it is hard to see where the gratitude should lie. Nonetheless, Kimmerer is showing us that gratitude is the way to experience true wealth because it alone opens up to the abundance we have and recognizes all we have been given.
Remember gratitude. Practice it. Gratitude is essential to the climate abundant life.
Anthony Signorelli
To learn more about how you can save money, save time, and live a better, more abundant life while reducing emissions, get my free newsletter The Climate Abundant Life.
I love this. Lucky for us, progress makes it easier than ever before.
Progress allows us to do more from less. At this very moment, in my pocket, I have a radio, compass, maps, encyclopedia, flashlight, music collection, internet browser, ruler, camera, video camera, address book, calendar, access to millions of ebooks, audiobooks, calculator, video player, phone, video phone, weather forecast, credit cards, gift cards, bank account, investment accounts, scanner, fax machine, car keys…just to name a few.
We can be abundant without overusing the Earth’s resources.
Tony,
I am grateful for this post, and your reflection on ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’. Thank you for presenting an ‘interior’ experience related to the abundance that the earth offers all sentient beings. This experience of gratitude is always available for all of us.