Text: Ellen Wild
Our world has been in a pressure cooker for a while now. Socially, politically and naturally. Tensions so tight that a soft breath of air could make our whole circus explode. Everyone is looking at everyone else and everyone is looking at the other side of the world.
How is it that we are still fighting for basic human rights?
Our eyes are chocked, our hearts in fear and our voice helpless.
Nothing we can do, right? Locked up by our own needs.
Completely dependent on the products of the imprisoner.
Completely depended on its mercy.
Where is our gas coming from?
But what will we do without it? We have too much to lose.
So, we complain, scream out even, but we don’t leave the prison, even if we see a door standing open.
Where is our plastic coming from?
All those affordable objects that make our life seemingly more joyful.
But who can pay quality? Who can pay sustainability?
We are not safe enough to really care.
Where is our food coming from?
But we have to eat, right? We can’t afford to know where the packages in the supermarket are coming from. Cheap cruelty to feed the masses with sadness.
Is speciesism an extension of racism?
But when we get sick, they will care for us with their pills. Because they care, right? We are safe with them, right?
Where is our hate coming from?
We scream out when innocent children are massacred at the other side of the world. But we don’t look twice when underpaid foreign workers move in the shadows of our own town. Treated they whole life with just a little less respect, just a little more mistrust.
Even today, women have to fight for their rights in our patriarchal world.
I stand with the powerful women of Iceland, shutting down their country to raise awareness across the world.
I also wonder how many foreign workers were present in the march. Or did they have too much to lose? Can they only afford gratitude for the bare minimum?
What is different than us is mistrusted.
A society of people feeling unsafe whether their basic needs will be met.
A society where its people can barely afford to life anymore.
Prices rising, hostility growing. Too much to lose.
We are in a pressure cooker. How much more can we take before it all blows to pieces?
And even amidst all this, we are reminded that mother earth is a part of us.
We can blame ourselves for climate change, species mass extinction and ecosystem disruption.
But we can’t blame ourselves for the ground blowing away from under our feet.
My heart is with the people living amidst the volcanic treat in south Iceland. As if life isn’t scary enough already.
Vulcanism is the perfect metaphor for what is happening in the world at large today. The perfect metaphor for what is happening inside a lot of us too.
Iceland delivers again. Turning the eyes off the world.
What will we do? What can we do?
It is said that art is the first thing people go to when they feel save. That it is the first sign of luxury. When our mind isn’t consumed with financial stability and having bills to pay. When our time isn’t consumed in drowning in responsibilities and caring for everything and everyone but ourselves.
Art sounds like the most useless and selfish thing to do in the current climate.
Still, I can’t think of a more perfect antidote for our psychological and spiritual wellbeing.
Fill it in how you like. Let your inner volcano erupt.
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