Dear conservationist, I know you’re exhausted

Dear conservationist,

I know you’re exhausted, and I know this because there are so many facets of exhaustion available on offer for you to feel. You may not feel totally burnt out right now, or maybe you do. Maybe there is just an underlying level of exhaustion nestled amongst your organs, deep in your core and ever present in your mind. Your exhaustion may have been there so long it hung up posters of its celebrity crush on the subcutaneous layer of your skin.

Your exhaustion may have moved in years ago when you realised that all the positive action that you and many others are taking for our natural world, is never quite enough. This is especially so considering how hard multinational corporations, governments and billionaires try to undo your efforts -and are extremely successful at doing so. Maybe your exhaustion started to nestle in when you realised how easy it would be for these powers to make simple changes that would exponentially improve our Earth’s chance of slowing down global warming, the human rate of consumption, natural disasters, and genocide. Maybe it was your soggy paper straw, a longer-than-necessary ride on public transport, or your guilt about needing a new pair of work boots that signed the lease that your exhaustion needed to get comfortable and stay long-term.

Maybe your exhaustion came from the constant striving and the consistent feeling that you are not quite where you need to be yet. Maybe you landed your dream job title, but you still can’t afford to pay your rent. Maybe your PhD is going on for way too long, shrouding you in the politics of academia. Maybe you have been volunteering for ten years or more, still trying desperately to prove that you are worthy of a paycheck. Or maybe you have a full-time job, but find yourself unfulfilled. In this time, your exhaustion spends late nights, weekends and any other spare time that you have accompanying you on the extra efforts you go to, just to feel as if you’re making a difference. Sometimes it’s as if your exhaustion is not just taking up residence inside of you, but it is also the companion that proves to you that you are trying to make the world a better place.

Or maybe your exhaustion found you when you were spending time grappling with simple muses such as where you should get your clothes- ethically made, second hand or borrowed from a friend? Or deciding how and what you should eat, where it came from, and what implications it has on sustainable ecosystems or animal welfare. Maybe it came from changing your bank accounts or superannuation funds to options that don’t fund fossil fuel companies and ensuring that your employer has all of your new details. As simple tasks riddle you with effort, guilt and confusion, your exhaustion starts to reproduce, and have children of its own, taking up more real estate in your body and mind.

Maybe your exhaustion was a pyromaniac and decided to burn its house down and roast you from the inside, ravaging a fire through you that is taking all of your effort and energy to put out. Maybe you are burnt out from everything you need to deal with in your life as a conservationist. Of course, we must consider that as well as a conservationist, you are still a person. A person with human relationships to tend to and bills to pay. You need shelter and to feed and water yourself and potentially others. There is so much going through your mind, body and soul. No wonder you wish you were a bear, able to hibernate once a year for a period of lying down that you could only ever dream of.

My dear conservationist, please let me lift the parts of the world off of your shoulders that you have decided are yours to carry. Let me remind you that no one tree is responsible for making a forest, but rather, you need the help of many more trees, middlestory, understory, birds, insects, mammals, fungi and light. Like a tree, you only have one niche to fill- this is all. Sometimes, you may live in spring, a flourishing time of productivity- yes, but you will also live through the other seasons too. Sometimes you may need to drop your leaves, and sometimes you may appear on the brink of death- but this is okay. When a fire rages through Australian bushland, it breaks the dormancy of seeds and assists seedlings and buds in sprouting anew. Sometimes you need devastation for the miracle of fresh new life to appear. In time, you will be able to regrow with your own new foliage too.

We never expect a beaver to be more than a beaver, a leaf to be more than a leaf, or a star to be more than a star. In the same way, you are never expected to be more than you are. Like all else in nature, you are enough, filling the very unique niche that you do. You deserve lulls, quiet periods of rest and recuperation. Your cells deserve the space and time to multiply, your mind deserves to stop its race, and your heart rate deserves to slow. You are just a tree in a forest, you are one of many, and you are not alone.

My dear conservationist, I hope you can give yourself some grace in this time of exhaustion. Blue-green algae made the grand effort of mutating into all the life we see today on Earth, but it rarely gets any fan mail. We can indeed, go to extreme lengths to achieve great things and we may feel as if we must keep striving until we have received an indication that we have strived enough. But my friend, this is a world fueled by exploitation and overconsumption, so rarely will someone encourage you to slow down- but despite all of this, here I am encouraging you to slow down.

In a world where it feels like you are doing all the caring, let me validate your exhaustion, advocate for your rest and help to care for you.

Jessie