The mostly good guys

Including a few words about sea otters

Oliver Dodd, CC BY2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I had an idea for this Substack — the whole shebang not this individual post. The idea was that sometimes I would share an essay — words I put together about something I’m thinking. Though that is not an accurate description of the process. What I mean by essay is words that I travel through, that I hold up, one next to another, and see what they can teach me. What questions are raised when I sit down and listen to hear what words are there. I write down the words, some feel good — right — and some feel — thick — unresolved. So I leave them, and I wash the dishes, or I drive to Trader Joe’s or to pick up carpool and I hear a song or see something in the parking lot and I know something in a different way, or I realize something is connected. And when I say I realize something what I mean is realization visits me — I don’t concoct it, it descends. I call this God.

So one part of what I wanted to share with you through these letters is the wanderings and where they lead. They seem to lead somewhere helpful, for me, and it’s difficult (often) because I want them to be helpful to you and after writing what feels like a good one I’m scared it won’t come again. What if I start to write the words and I get stuck? What if I can’t find anything useful? But I do sit down again, like I am now, and listen, and hope. I call this Faith.

Or practice. What is faith and what is practice and are they the same? I am wondering.

What I came here thinking I was going to say today is that one half of what I meant to do here was travel through words to come to a more connected way of being in the world. To find a way to root if not always joyfully then at least faithfully into life, into the life of the world that is. And the other half (is what I’m here to talk about but doesn’t seem to be being what I’m talking about) was to share hopeful stories that I see elsewhere, to provide a sort of digest of hopefulness of ways people every day are using their spark, people just like you— you—are using your spark to care for the world that is. To be part of what I believe? hope? imagine? can be and is already emerging, that we are building that is there behind so much noise, quietly becoming.

All around us, every day, in every life, there are stories of people caring for places looking for new ways remembering old ways helping loving trying. (Even, maybe especially, in the darkest of stories there are people loving, hoping, praying, working, wishing for their brother’s redemption, their daughter’s illumination, their father’s penitence.)

But though I carry seeds from stories I’ve encountered — imaginative ways of living, concrete stories of caring for a place and its inhabitants — when I go searching the sources I’ve flagged to create this list of stories to share, I find myself shrinking. No, this is not what I want to share. No, this does not create the feeling that I am wanting to share. (Now, at this moment, my heartbeat is faster. I know I've found the thing that wants saying. I don’t know how to say it, yet. So the working and the waiting begin.)

Otters

Sea otters are like scallops (and beaver, and bison, and wolves). Take a handful of otters, put them back where we found them and — voila! — restoration of habitat (kelp forests in the case of the sea otter) that provides food, nurseries, and shelter for hundreds of other species. A more playful world, storing more carbon, with more fish, more vibrant, more vital, energized. Imagine a thriving coastline (I wonder if you can)…

I would not be telling the truth if I avoided mentioning that the reason we don’t just sprinkle otters is because they also eat crabs — lots and lots of crabs — so it’s tricky because with more otters things will shift for (some, a particular subset of) hard working, briny, beautiful people who make their livelihoods providing food for others.

I wanted to tell you about sea otters. Because I love them. And then I went to read in my “positive news” feed. I read the words, I read the studies, I read the briefings. I’m not going to share what I read or where I read it. Instead here I document the feeling I got during my online travels:

Sea otters ought to make a comeback on the West Coast and that would be adorable. Study X has documented that otters contribute X% to X that is worth $$. Respected journal reports that evidence shows that with more sea otters incomprehensible quantity of X element is stored in sea sediments by means of mechanism. Since world governments have committed X by X, this should happen. Also, the reason the sea otters are gone is because humankind is greedy and these bad guys who still exist now are against this because greed and shortsightedness. People are still pretty bad, they are wrong but some people we give these kinds of positive names to are right and good. There isn’t much time left and the dire consequences of all these bad humans being dumb in the past, and also all living adults with whom the kids are mad because how come you haven’t fixed this yet—the consequences of humans being themselves which is by nature sinful—is that things are much worse and very scary but maybe if we can get some otters back then won’t that be great. Here’s a picture of either a playful otter or a lot of destruction.

Possible headlines: We’re in a race against time; How worried should you be about the future of kelp; A letter from the future — are you one of the bad guys? and so forth.

Just yuck

Take, for instance: Alaska, where 431 released sea otters helped repopulate the coastal waters in the 1960s, now has both the largest number of otters and the most productive commercial fishery in the U.S.

I’m glad what they say happened, that it’s true, and that somebody paid attention to what was working. Thank you all very much. Hooray!! Otters!!! I love every one of those 431 otters (that’s not so many!) and the people who released them, who had the idea to release them and make sure they survived. I love that now there’s more otters and that they help make more fish for bears to eat, or for people to fish for or just to look at glistening under the water and occasionally popping out when they are chased.

The italicized sentence is a straightforward and factual description of something that I like. The sentence is pretty harmless. But, UGH. I guess I’m tired of being spoken to like I’m a robot. My husband is a scientist as I’ve told you a million times. I have a masters degree in ecology (that’s science). I’ve got no beef with science. I like herbaria. And taxonomy and all the stuff. Maybe I’m just repeating what I said about Ikea and the buns. Science — yay. Motivating action through statistics and science-speak + shame? (gagging sound.)

Why can’t I just make a list of happy news and send it to you and hope that does something??

BECAUSE IT WON’T.

You don’t need more happy news. You don’t need a list of 10 stories. I don’t even read them anymore. I just keep them unread in my inbox, like an insurance policy against despair. But when I read them I don’t feel better.

And feeling ‘better’ I guess isn’t the goal. Maybe we don’t need to feel better. When I read them I don’t feel energy. An opening to flow. An opening to gratitude or generosity or connection or possibility. What I want is a path to service. What I want for all of us is to feel — not to numb and also not to surf waves of emotion, fury and despair — to use the awakeness, that aliveness, that comes with a feeling and combine the energy of that, in partnership with our big beautiful mind, to co-create a set of things we can do, things we can support, things we can love, ways we can be that aren’t so full of good guy bad guy shame and disgust and fear and all that crap all the time.

What if everyone is the good guys?

I know this is a HUGELY controversial header. You’re really upset with a lot of people today and they are doing bad s**t. What they are doing is dangerous, it’s damaging, unimaginable. Yes, people are stupid. I said something rude about someone I like a lot just because I was uncomfortable in a social situation and that person I like might have heard me. I don’t think she did, but she could have. That was plain dumb and I’m upset with myself for behaving that way. I have gone along with things I shouldn’t have. I was greedy, I wanted more than what I have and I was not thankful for everything — all the amazing things — that support me in life. Today, I mean. Sometimes I still eat animals that were forced to live terrible lives in terrible conditions. I try not to, but sometimes there is a nugget sitting right there and I don’t say no.

You might say that eating an occasional abused nugget and being needlessly bitchy out of insecurity are small sins compared to destroying a democracy. Probably. I’m just thinking about taking the log out of my own eye and whose job it is to make judgements and all that. And maybe also about the nature of our modern discourse. The good guying and bad guying and how that orients us to how we are being and what we feel energy to do.

Accepting the unacceptable. Maybe this is what I call forgiveness. Not being willing to treat any person like less than a person. Maybe this is what I call love.

My amazing teacher Donella Meadows taught me that every problem has a host of hearts attached. And they aren’t wrong. We can find a way, where there’s a will, to have more otters and more kelp and to do so in a manner that is respectful of, mindful of, caring towards, all the parties involved. That is a solution we can find. I know there are problems much more difficult than sea otters. Go to the Udvar-Hazy Center, the annex of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum and walk around amongst all of the aircraft and space rockets and weapons people have devised. We can figure stuff out when we want to.

So, no list then

In conclusion, the “digest” of hopeful stories idea is not gonna happen in the way I had in my mind.

I saw a video and it was pretty cool. Some of the language wasn’t that cool. But the pictures I liked. The hope I kinda felt I liked. There was a shot of a bird eating some grain, that was nice.

I think, funnily enough, as a writer, it’s the words I’m having so much trouble with these days. The patterns of using them, the ways they are used to try to motivate, the fear, the manipulation, the fear, taking what we love and dangling it in front of us — with all the danger. Just stop it already.

I also read a poem that brought me to tears. I don’t know if it helped, but maybe it did.

I’m glad we’re in this together. I’m glad the sun is out. I’m glad there are sea otters and I long for a coast full of them where we’ve found a thoughtful way to support fisherpeople who used to sell crab and now monitor kelp. I don’t know the answer but I believe we are clever enough to find an answer. I call this prayer.

Amen.

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Notes

1. When I read happy news stories sometimes I do feel better. And I’m glad they exist. I am thankful that people are looking for stories of positive changes. I just wish the WAY we write about these could be different.

2. I really like the marketing emails from Who Gives a Crap. They sell toilet paper that you get by subscription. It’s good paper and a great company and their messaging makes me smile. Here is their list of good news from yesterday.

3. Yesterday (I wonder how many Beatles references I could drop in to one post if I tried, I guess for now I’ll let it be) the European Parliament passed the Nature Restoration Law. It’s a big deal towards restoring health to a bunch of land and sea by 2030, which if you’re not a math person I can tell you is pretty soon. Some mostly good guys wanted it to happen and some mostly good guys were opposed for reasons that made a lot of sense to them. I’m glad science and hearts lined up on the side of it coming to be. Maybe next time I’ll write more about ways things could shift so that different things make sense.

4. Another cool story: some people in Germany have worked out a way to convert a gas-powered car into an EV in 8 hours or less. Not perfect yet, but all kinds of people are working every day to find creative new ways of doing things. I originally saw this story in the toilet paper list mentioned above.

5. Here’s the video I watched. I’m not into the title, but there are some parts that made me feel a hopeful feeling.

6. Here’s the poem I read (best read aloud).

7. Here’s a cool group working on otter reintroduction.