On the banks of one of California’s last out-of-control rivers. Photo by me.
Alcoholism and other addictions run rampant on both sides and through multiple generations of my family. And, one of the things you have to learn if you want to be on the healing side of that equation has to do with control. Mostly that you don’t have much, especially when it comes to other people.
No amount of begging, pleading, persuading, perfectionism, information, etc. is enough for somebody to stop doing a thing they are addicted to until they are ready. So simple to get on an intellectual level, much harder to hold onto in a requisite, embodied way. That’s why the serenity prayer used in 12-step programs can be such a useful reminder: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It must have been with this in mind that I said something in a recent interview with David Corn of Mother Jones that I hadn’t really intended to, which was: “I grew up in an alcoholic family. You have to learn you’re not in control of everything.”
For context, he’d been asking me about how I cope with the ups and downs of working on climate issues, particularly about how it feels when you know something and it doesn’t seem like other people are willing to listen. That is just not an orientation that resonates with me, and my main response was really about the fact that I deeply understand that whether or not anybody listens to me, much less changes anything, is not really up to me. Nor do I want it to be.
Right about now, I can hear all the “buts” exploding in your minds, and I get it. But, I will say that control is a theme I’ve been wrestling with for a long time, in no small part because I work on disasters. For example, after one of our big California wildfire disasters, I wrote in Bay Nature:
There is no doubt that this disaster has deeply tested our assumptions about how we live with wildfires, notably the idea that we can control them. From Houston to Puerto Rico to here at home in California, disasters are revealing new ground that is paradoxically both shakier and more solid than it once seemed. We may find our footing by finally embracing the fact that we can’t always be in charge.
Along similar lines, I wrote this about climate change in New Republic:
It has become clear it is not enough to rely on scientific and technical information, expertise, and authority alone when it comes to transformative social action on climate change. Instead, many people are working together to affect change outside the realm of science, often in seemingly messy and chaotic ways.
There are so many ways that addiction, and addiction treatment, relates to the primary issues I work on: water, wildfire, and climate change. And I think control in particular will continue to rear its challenging head again and again as we wrestle with climate change adaptation questions like whether sea walls that may or may not work are worth the investment.
What I keep trying to work with is the wisdom piece — navigating the very fine line between doing what we can and knowing what we can’t.
Recommended:
The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim by Rosanna Xia at the LA Times. Hits a lot deep questions and tensions about control.
‘If the land is sick, you are sick’: An Aboriginal approach to mental health in times of drought by Georgina Kenyon at Mosaic.
Side Chick Nation. Yes, it’s a whole book, written by Aya de Leon as part of her “justice hustlers” series, which is truly the stuff of genius: a subversive feminist heist and romance series in the urban fiction genre. With this fourth book in the series (not required to read the previous three first), she takes on climate change as Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico. Trust me, you want to know about Aya’s work.
Event note:
For folks in the general Bay Area, on July 17, I will be part of a program at Climate One at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco with Mark Arax, author of the new book The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, and Diana Marcum, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Tenth Island. I admire both of these people deeply, love both of these books, and am honored to appear with them to talk about water and more in California. Please come if you can!
I welcome thoughts you want to send me about the content of this newsletter or otherwise.