Evolution

I’m writing this blog the old fashioned way, as I often do, with a pencil and paper. I’ve positioned myself in my favourite place to write – the Wetlands at Australia Zoo. People assume that I come here to write for the serenity or to get close to nature, but whilst this place is many things, I don’t consider it to be serene. If I wanted serenity I would go out into the bush where there are no people, no photo snapping tourists looking over my shoulder to see what I’m writing, no school excursions, no loud-mouthed juveniles singing Lady Ga Ga songs to spoil the silence.

Instead, I come here for the energy. I come to be inspired, for the meditational value alone. I come to be enlightened. I’ve spent an untold number of hours here in the last year. My annual pass, aside from being my small monetary contribution to wildlife conservation has given me hours of frequently interrupted serenity, but I keep returning because if you come here and shut out the mosquitoes and the horse flies…and the people, if you just sit and “feel” this place has an energy that you just don’t find elsewhere.

Without getting too hippy-dippy on ya’ll, if you can remember the energy that Steve Irwin carried – and let’s face it – who doesn’t remember it?? That energy remains at Australia Zoo, there is a sense of optimism here that says “it’s not too late, we can make a difference”. And when you spend the time to make yourself truly familiar with some of the awful things that are going on in the world, you need that sort of energy to continue to convince yourself that you can make a difference.

Anyway, that’s not what this blog post is about. I want to talk about fear.

I had a conversation some time ago with a woman who asked quite a loaded question. She asked me “do you ever think about what you say, before you say it?” It was an enquiring question, as much as an accusatory one I’m sure. She was asking, in actual fact, about my blog and whether I thought about the ramifications of what I write. Ironically, I had to think about the answer.

The short answer is, yes. I think about what I write on these pages in great detail. I think about what it is that I want to get across, how I want the piece to be structured, and for a brief moment I do consider how it might be perceived. But if I truly thought about the repercussions of what I say, in all reality, I probably wouldn’t ever write a thing.

When I was about eight years old, I made the depressing realisation that all things in life are controlled by fear. I went to school out of fear that my parents would do their nut if they found out I didn’t go. I did what my teacher said when I was at school out of fear that I would be punished if I did not. I did what my friends did out of fear that they wouldn’t like me if I did otherwise. And to an eight-year-old mind, it appeared that most things in society were motivated the same way. People didn’t break the law for fear of going to jail.

Over the next 8 years I started to realise there was another driving force called pleasure, which quite often over ruled fear. The need to seek pleasure quite frequently started to win out in my teenage years, as with most teens, fear started to subside, confidence rose and we started seeing risk taking behaviour with the sudden realisation, that we are – despite wheat everyone tells us – invincible!

Fast forward another 8 years and we’ve now lived through equally eventful lives motivated by fear versus pleasure. Unfortunately during our teens and early 20’s our life without fear also leads us to pain. We become acquainted with the scientific equation dumb shit + no fear = ouch. So we let fear back into our lives. Unfortunately for most people instead of letting in a measured dose of fear to the extent of “caution” we let the fear again become the controlling factor. Fear outweighs our passion, and in many cases, fear outweighs our need to seek pleasure. We become “safe”, we become “conservative”, we become “nothing”. And it doesn’t matter that we’re being “nothing” because everyone else is being “nothing” too, and when you’re no-one, no-one else cares what you think, do or say because… eh, you’re living controlled by fear and when you live that way the worst you’ll probably ever be criticized for is your choice of hair style.

I have a Brolga eyeballing me – literally less than 2m away – awesome!

So what’s left to gain us status if we’re not actually doing anything or being anyone? Stature is gained by possessions, wealth, we are defined by how much we accumulate and we consume to give ourselves pleasure. Our acquisitions make us somebody, hence the saying “keeping up with the Jones’”.

20 years ago I wouldn’t have thought about what I write to the extent that I do now. I guess that means I’ve evolved to some extent. However, 20 years ago I was writing about rock music and I put myself into a position where I didn’t ever have to say anything negative about anyone. I chose who I wrote about and lived by the “if you don’t have anything nice to say” rule. As pleasurable as that might have been at the time, it’s this sort of innocuous lifestyle that leads us to …nowhere.

Prior to my much publicly debated lifestyle change, I lived many years consuming. I spent large sums of money on things I didn’t really need. I bought gifts for my children that, if I looked at them with 100% honesty in my heart, were only purchased to out-do the gift I got them the year before. Why? Because I didn’t want to disappoint them and I had become drunk on the pleasure I gained from making their eyes light up.

When I started this campaign, for want of a better word, it is true to say that I was more than happy with what I had at the time. And I wanted nothing else in life. I probably wasn’t entirely honest with myself however about how much I was willing to lose.

Perhaps it’s pure pigheadedness that has put us where we are today. Which, for those still waiting on an update, is in a very tiny (temporary) three-bedroom house with concrete floors, no floor coverings, no curtains or blinds, no heating or cooling, intermittent TV, and half the family still sleeping in tents – an hour away from schools.

It did, however, take what we’ve been through to honestly make me truly grateful for what we have, and I say that with no fear of judgment because I believe now that you really don’t truly appreciate what you have until you lose it, no matter how grateful you may believe you are.

After moving from place to place camping for 6 weeks, ironically the thing that made us feel most at home when we moved into a house was the tent in the backyard. Apart from each other, this was what we had left to attach ourselves to. This was familiar. This was safe. After a few nights sleeping in the house shoulder to shoulder, some of the kids were relieved to go back to a tent. This is something that can’t be explained anymore than it can be empathised, because again, until you’ve been there, you really can’t know.

I can understand why some homeless people choose to remain homeless even though they may not have chosen to be homeless initially. I can understand why many homeless people turn to drugs or alcohol, as the pain of abandonment, isolation and lack of control could quite easily have lead me that way had I not been Buddhist and had the money to do so.

This is insight, for which I am truly grateful.

So as part of my evolution both as a human and as a would-be-Buddhist, we have decided to sell much of what we own a) to supplement our income and support ourselves without the need for welfare and b) because we simply do not need it, and 8 weeks without it has proved that.

We don’t intend to live in abject poverty, or without any luxuries. We aren’t complete and utter hippies (yet). I realise many people won’t understand my lifestyle choice and I’ll be criticized for not ensuring my children own every gadget known to mankind. But if we’re honest, most of the crap we buy for our children we buy out of fear. Fear that they won’t fit in without it, fear they they won’t be cool. Fear that they’ll feel that horrible pain that is there to make us balanced and learn. That absent pain that’s created the most selfish generation in the history of mankind.

When you live your life controlled by fear, nothing extraordinary ever gets done.

As I sit here in Steve Irwin’s wetlands I think: “Imagine. Imagine if this great Wildlife Warrior let fear control his life. Imagine if he let fear stand in the way of teaching his children about crocs. Imagine if fear prevented him from passing on his legacy to his children.”

Here’s a family living their lives on show, being criticised as parents by people who don’t know them, who have no idea how they live or why they do what they do. Ignorance – fueled by fear of what they do not understand.

Steve Irwin became an international superstar, no doubt reluctantly, in an effort to save what he was passionate about. It’s the public’s perception that he gave up the right to privacy, so he could take his message to the widest audience possible. I don’t know the Irwin’s but my battle over the last 2 months has given me so much more respect and empathy for this family.

I don’t have a zoo to entice people to come and get to know endangered animals, and I don’t have a celebrity status to draw attention to myself, although we did gain a couple of thousand followers on the blog after my Open Letter, so thank you for that. My hope is that like Steve, I can use my passion, my energy and my belief that we can make a difference to actually make an impact.

I know this is a really long post, and I’m sure I lost many of you about 1,000 words ago, but if you’re still reading – thank you. Whether you believe in climate change or not is irrelevant to me. All I need is for people to believe in Global Change, and to commit themselves to making small meaningful changes in the way they live their lives and we will start to see a change.

Thanks again for your love and support. Live with passion…

Cate

PS I’ve left comments open, if you’re going to play fair I’ll leave them open, if you want to post hateful garbage I’ll close them. Simple.