How to make the impossible possible–Part 1

Grand gestures are not always so grand. Everyday practice is.

In 2018, an opinion piece by Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones appeared in the New York Times with the headline: “Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It.” The authors—one a climate activist, the other a climate scientist—took up a question on a lot of our minds:

“How do we engage in a possibly — but not probably — winnable struggle within a rigged system against great odds, the ultimate results of which we’ll never see? Forget success, how do we even get out of bed in the morning?”

Now six years later, sustaining life on our planet has only gotten tougher. Instead of fighting together for a better, more sustainable future, we the people have spent the past six years fighting each other. 

So is it okay now to give up and go back to bed? Not so fast. Schendler and Jones point out:

If the human species specializes in one thing, it’s taking on the impossible. We are constitutionally equipped to understand this situation. We are, after all, mortal, and so our very existence is a fight against inevitable demise. We also have experience: The wicked challenges we’ve faced through the ages have often been seemingly insurmountable. . . We’ve spent our time as Homo sapiens fighting what J.R.R. Tolkien called “the long defeat.”

But how can we resist the long defeat and fight for a better future when we can barely make it through an already overstuffed day?  Schendler and Jones offer up the concept of practice as a way to cut the impossible down to size and make it possible. 

A practice is something you do every day because it has value in and of itself. It’s a way of life, they explain, a joyful habit, the right way to live:

Practice starts with a deep understanding of the problem, so it will mean reading a little about climate science. Our actions must be to scale, so while we undertake individual steps in our lives, like retrofitting light bulbs, we must realize that real progress comes from voting, running for office, marching in protest, writing letters, and uncomfortable but respectful conversations with fathers-in-law. This work must be habitual. Every day some learning and conversation. Every week a call to Congress. Every year a donation to a nonprofit advancing the cause. In other words, a practice.

In a gem of an article that speaks to our practice as citizens, Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center reminds us that “our Founders believed that personal self-government was necessary for political self-government. In their view, the key to a healthy republic begins with how we address our own flaws and commit to becoming better citizens over time.”¹

The more of us who commit to becoming better citizens and shift our everyday practices accordingly, the more we can chip away at the problems standing between us and a better future. “When enough people take up a cause as practice, cultural norms change,” Schendler and Jones remind us. “Think gay marriage. Think the sharp decline in smoking in the United States.” And the satisfaction of taking up a cause reverberates within as well. “The rewards are so compelling, so nurturing and so natural a piece of the human soul that we can’t help but do it.”²

What Peter Gabriel wrote in his song “Biko” about South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, we might also say about the daily toil of citizens lighting the way to a more just future through their everyday actions:³

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

For inspiration, click on the above image (please forgive the ad at the start).

And stay tuned! The next post will showcase five impossibly possible practices for everyday life.

Notes

1. Read the article: Jeffrey Rosen, “Opinion The Founders’ antidote to demagoguery is a lesson for today.” The Washington Post, February 20, 2024.

2. Read the article: Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones, “Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It: It begins with how we live our lives every moment of every day.” New York Times, October 6, 2018. Some quotes were edited for brevity.

3. My thanks to my good friend Bob Putnam for reminding me of Schendler and Jones’s article and of Peter Gabriel’s song Biko.