We’ve reached the end of this essay series. Shall I start minding my own business now?
The problem is that I want everything to be my business. I want my neighbour’s wellbeing to be my business. I want the person who is struggling the most in our community to be my business. I want wonderful moments of pride and celebration to be my business.
There’s pressure to emphasize this hyper individualism, this sense that we need to disregard how interconnected we all are.
I want a world where we pick each other’s kids up from school, where we drop by with dinner unexpectedly because we cooked up a feast, where we hold each other when we grieve. I want us to feel the raindrops on our faces, and know when the weather is changing. I want us to feel the full moon and recognize the call of a northern flicker, and a spotted towhee, and a nuthatch.
We don’t need more minding our own business, we need more connection.
My heart breaks that there is a genocide happening across the world and that we are deforesting the Amazon. My heart also breaks that my neighbour who sleeps in a doorway down the street from me has a painful open wound on their ankle. My heart breaks that Stoney Creek was polluted with firefighting contaminants, and that firefighters have to work around those toxic substances every day and that it’s killing them and that firefighters are on the frontline of the toxic drug crisis and climate disasters and that they tried to help our neighbours as they died in their homes during the heat dome. My heart breaks for the animals—human and not human—that flee wildfires every summer. My heart breaks for the baby crow that fell from the nest and landed on the hard pavement, the same hard pavement that forms a bed for people those who are struggling the most.
My heart breaks for us all every single day.
And yet I’m hopeful. Because of connection.
Because
Climate Recentered
Youth go to court for climate justice
Monkey Rebels
Yellowhead Institute
Aboriginal Land Trust housing
Falling Back in Love with being Human
and because of you.
Image description: Nadine lays on her side with her eyes closed. A yellow patterned blanket is pulled up to her chin. Above her head says “mind your own goddamn business”.
