Dear Conservationist, I’m no longer striving to make the world a better place.

Dear conservationist,

My name is Jessie and I am a striving addict, a striveoholic if you will. I have been striving since I was 5 when I first learnt about deforestation. I strived to know more about what was going on in the world, I strived to be older so I could volunteer, I strived to go to an agricultural and horticultural school, I strived to get a biodiversity degree, I strived to finish my honours, I strived to get a conservation job, I strived to get a higher paying conservation job, and I strived to make the conservation industry better for conservationists. Throughout all of that striving, I was striving to be the change I wanted to see in the world. I have potentially only spent 4 years of my entire life not striving. That’s a long time to strive.

I have decided to come to this strivers-anonymous meeting because I am ready to give it up. I can finally see how it is impacting my health, happiness, work life, and relationships. I don’t even know if my striving is making the world a better place.

Before yesterday, if you asked me if my striving was a problem, I probably would have said no. Many conservationists like myself see value in the perpetual good fight. Striving gives us purpose and makes us feel better about ourselves. Some might even say it’s noble to strive and dedicate your life to a worthy cause. But those people are misguided.

I have decided to give up striving because living this way means that I am perpetually living in the future, desperately trudging towards an ideallistic version of the world that may not ever exist in my lifetime. At any given moment, I am focused on where I should be, what I should be doing, and what the world should look like. I have exhausted myself spending 26 years chasing the future, tying up my own worth in the state of the natural world. After 26 years of relentless striving towards environmental preservation, it’s pretty disheartening to find myself existing in the present time where the natural world faces more peril than ever. Though this isn’t a failing on my behalf, it always feels as if there is more I could be doing.

Until now, I’ve never understood why my bosses, friends, and family have always told me that I’m too hard on myself. “But I’m not a perfectionist!” I would cry! All this time, I never understood that a striving addiction means that I am never satisfied with the way things are. Our circumstances don’t need to be perfect, but they need to not be like this. My striving rubs off on those around me too. If I am never satisfied with my own efforts, how could anyone think I’d be satisfied with theirs? I feel a sense of shame for often coming across to colleagues or loved ones as too negative or too idealistic in my persuit of wanting to get the most impactful outcome from every task.

Check me in to striving rehab. I need to stop.

I need to stop because despite my intentions to centre this year around joy, this has been the most challenging year of my life. Looking at my life objectively, it shouldn’t have been the hardest and maybe former versions of myself would resent me for how hard I have found it. It wasn’t the year that my mum was diagnosed with cancer, the year I struggled the most with PTSD, or even the year that I was trapped with a psychotic family in the middle of a country town. None the less, I found myself in new depths of grief, sadness, and hopelessness despite all of the measures I put in place to ensure myself a joyous year. This is what striving has done to me, it has made me lose sight of the value of what I already have, who I already am, and the ways that the world has improved in my lifetime with the help of my efforts and yours too, dear conservationist.

As I rapidly approach my next lap around the sun, I have been fevourishly trying to ensure that my next year of life isn’t spent in this condition. Thankfully, in a beautiful moment of clarity, I have finally came to terms with the only solution equipped to overcome my inner turmoil. I need to give up my striving habit. Wonderfully enough, identifying this makes me feel lighter already.

I need to stop striving because I need to tell 5 year-old Jessie what the world is like now. Living in 1997, she doesn’t know a world where it’s common practice to bring re-usable bags to the supermarket, keep cups to cafes and have second hand clothes available to purchase at the touch of a button. She doesn’t know a world where bush kindergarten businesses are taking off, as are specialised environmental education programs and eco-tourism ventures that seamlessly integrate citizen science into their offerings. Five year old Jessie doesn’t know the stories of animals being brought back from the brink of extinction, the hundreds of thousands of trees planted each year, and the school students that flood the streets advocating for their future.

Moreso, I need to tell the Jessie from 5 years ago that not only is she not the lonliest conservationist in the world anymore, that local conservation organisations are buying her book How to Conserve Conservationists and giving copies to their staff as end of year presents. I need to tell her that she has given a voice to over 200 conservationists and a community to 7000 individuals from across the world. Jessie from 5 years ago would cry with astonishment, gratitude, and amazement if she found out that she represented caring for conservationists at the World Species Congress, but instead, I spent this year crying that I wasn’t doing enough. Realising this pains me and I want to honour these ways that I have contributed to my version of a better world instead of dismissing them as a means to something bigger and better later on.

The truth of the matter is that I have become the change I wanted to see- and this fact has a gravity to it that I have never appreciated before. If I am honest with myself, I know that if I just keep being the change I want to see in the world for the rest of my life, that’s all I ever need to do. As long as I keep living by my values every day and being the person I want to be in each moment, who I will be, should be, or could be, doesn’t matter. And nor should it.

That person doesn’t exist, but I do.

So like a smoker replaces cigarettes with gum, I will endeavour to sink my teeth into focusing on being instead of striving. If we can all exist at any given time as the leader, parent, relative, friend, colleague, partner or stranger that we wish we could see in the world, Earth would be a much better place to live. Aiming to be someone is no match for being someone who already is.

I hope you, too, know that you don’t need to be anyone else other than who you are right now. You are enough as you are, you have come so far to get here, and you ARE making the world a better place to be.

Thank you for being you, I hope you keep doing it for as long as you live.

I’ll see you at next week’s meeting,

Jessie