How Not Being a Greedy Plonker Is Great for Our Mental Health (& the Planet)

My job is helping people who are struggling with anxiety, stress, and overwhelm. I also tango with those experiences from time to time. Like this morning. I burst into sudden, hot tears of shame because I thought my cat was looking at me in a judgmental way. I am not kidding.

This reaction to my cat's look (he was sneering) tells me I am overdoing it.

And I bet you are overdoing it too, even if you really insist that you aren't, definitely not, how could you be overdoing it, you are lazy and stupid and worthless, duh.

What’s struck me over the past couple of years in particular is the powerful parallel between these inner struggles we humans have, and our relationship with the natural world.
We demand too much of ourselves (or, too much is demanded from us, but either way we are being demanded upon) and we’re doing the same to the planet.

As in: we take and take and take and take and take without giving back. We are greedy, selfish plonkers.

This has resulted in an exceedingly one-sided relationship that’s left both the planet and our mental health utterly shredded.

It's no coincidence that so many of us are struggling mentally and emotionally at the same time that the Earth's systems are breaking down. Whether you’re feeling it as anxiety, burnout, or just that vague, gnawing sense that something is deeply off, it's worth noticing the parallels. We are intimately interconnected expressions of nature, after all.

Of course we feel it.

We are take, take, take, taking from the earth and we are also being take, take taken from...from jobs, obligations and demands.

And we are both —planet and people — feeling like shit.

Our minds, bodies and nature aren’t separate—we are all part of the same system. It's called, um...LIFE. We evolved within the intricate web of this miracle of life, shaped by its rhythms, flows and cycles.

One important rule

Nature has a simple but immutable rule—give and take.

Or: don't be a greedy plonker.

Trees provide oxygen, shade, shelter and food.
Coral provides a safe habitat for algae, while algae photosynthesise to produce food that nourishes the coral. Together, they support vast marine ecosystems.
Wolves keep deer populations in check, which helps forests thrive and rivers stabilise.
Bees pollinate flowers, and flowers bribe them with nectar.
Sea otters munch on sea urchins, preventing them from overgrazing kelp forests. Healthy kelp forests sequester carbon and support marine biodiversity.
(and many, many, many, many more examples)
Everything hums along in a beautifully messy web of mutual back-scratching.

Er...except....this is awkward ..except us humans. Somewhere along the way we bulldozed our way out of that reciprocal, symbiotic relationship and something fundamental broke.

Now we are disconnected from the cycles of giving and receiving. We’ve become isolated and all we do is take take take take take take take take.

Do you need to write 'take' so much?

Yes, go away

And what do we give back?
Nothing good.
Destruction. Pollution. Poison. Devastation. Depletion. Wreckage.

Instead of being part of the system, we act like we’re above it, like we are entitled to take what we want.

We think that our species is exceptional because we are 'intelligent' and 'conscious'...um... what kind of intelligence drives a species to knowingly, with awareness, destroy its own life support systems? The story of human exceptionalism is completely baffling.

This is totally related to your anxiety, stress and overwhelm

Here’s where it gets interesting (and by 'interesting' I actually mean existentially depressing, but let's keep going). This 'taking without giving' thing that we do isn't only hurting the planet, it’s also eroding our mental health.

Disconnection from nature is disconnection from ourselves.

We weren’t built to live in sterile boxes under fluorescent lights, scrolling through doom-laden feeds and eating garishly coloured, plastic-wrapped semi-food-like substances.

I absolutely love doritos.

Our bodies and minds evolved, for 99% of the evolution of our species, in sync with natural rhythms like the rising sun, the changing seasons, local food, close relationships and responsibility.

We have been ripped out of that ...and the skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, chronic illness, cancer, diabetes, and that ever-present existential dread that choke us up are not a coincidence.

We are mammals, too, with deeply ingrained biological and physiological connections with land, water, air, soil.

We’re not so different from animals in a zoo. Take a majestic lioness out of the savannah and put her in a concrete enclosure with a fake tree and a diet of pre-packaged meat, and what happens? She'll pace, grow lethargic, she'll lose her spark and vitality.

Sure, she's alive. But she's no longer part of something, contributing to the dynamic cycle of life.

Same for us. We aren't contributing. And if we aren't contributing, can we say we even belong? We are just takers, not givers. Is it any wonder we feel this this deep, gnawing discontent and isolation?

Ok, now you're bummed out and you wanna do something about it?

If this piece resonates with you, you might feel the urge to act on this.

But I believe strongly that we humans rush to act, and that's part of the problem. We are too hasty in our feverish need to feel like we are doing something.

We need to learn to sit with, dwell in, and awaken to these ideas.

"What does that even meannnnnnnn wahhhhhh" I hear you wail as you hop up and down with impatience.

What does that mean, to dwell and awaken? It means letting these truths settle into your bones. Don't leap up to fix, solve, or do something. See if you can stay with the discomfort long enough to really feel it. Notice the tightness in your chest when you think about what’s been lost. Let the ache of grief, sadness, or longing rise up. Ask yourself what these emotions might be trying to tell you. Awakening to the realities of our world is about seeing clearly, even (and especially) when it hurts.

And let’s be clear: there’s no need to spiral into despair, but if you feel it coming, let it come.

Despair, grief, and sadness are deeply primal and profoundly human responses to the disconnection, unravelling and collapse that's happening all around us.

We —humans — have fucked up, majorly. I am part of it. So are you. Although our parts may be very, very small, it's humbling and nourishing to sit with that for a bit. Let the weight of that burrow into us. Then, in good time, no rush..clarity, responsibility, or just a renewed sense of connection to what matters....something will emerge from you^^.

^^Was that obscenely annoying and you feel Impatient and frustrated because I basically said you should wait, sit with shitty feelings and then not give you the answer? I know how that feels. If you need a tiny thing, muse on a thing you could do today or soon, to give back.. give back to yourself, to someone else, or to the natural world of which you are a vital part?

You were skimming this whole time and you need the key points, right?

Here ya go:

• We’re part of nature, not separate from it, and the disconnection is harming both us and the planet.
• Our mental health struggles mirror the Earth's struggles—we’ve broken the natural balance of giving and taking, and we are all feeling the strain.
• We need to pause, not rush to fix everything, but instead start to learn to feel our freakin' feelings.