13 questions

Where did we go?
Are you making a difference?
Is there a way of embracing this hot mess we have landed ourselves in?
Which way now?
What war is this?
What are you afraid of?
What is the other hand doing?
Who am I?
Why not?
What if there is no tomorrow?
Where do we go from here?
What is your neighbour’s name?
What is nature?

So far I embroidered 13 questions on my suit. I walked around with them, I thought about them, people read them, new questions came up.
A lot of them are about directions.
“Where did we go?”
“Which way now?”
“Where do we go from here?”
I guess we are a bit lost. Or maybe that is an understatement.
“Who am I?” somebody asked. Are they, this “I”, the same as this “we”?
Where did we come from? Are we nature? Or have we seperated ourselves from nature?
“What is nature?”

I don’t know the answers. I only know that when I am lost, I sit down and I wait. I listen. It is an active waiting, taking time, giving time. So much goes wrong because we look for answers before we really know what it is we are looking for, what we need, what the problem is. Fixing instead of really solving.

Which doesn’t mean we don’t have to act. We are running out of time.

“What are you afraid of?”

My fears are different when I am on a walk. I don’t worry about making a living, about planning my life, about having too little time. There have been walking days when I thought “If I die now, I wouldn’t mind.” I never think that when I’m in my “other life”.
I’m afraid we won’t solve the global problems we are in. It makes me anxious sometimes and I am not the only one. A lot has been written about climate anxiety in the last years. Children grow up with it these days and in a way that worries me more than the possibility I will spend the last part of my life on an unlivable planet. I haven’t lost hope though.  

“What if there is no tomorrow?”

I like that question because you can interpret it in two ways. Like a memonto mori, none of us is going to live forever —although some people are putting a lot of effort into changing that. Would you have any regrets if you would know today is your last day? Are there things you haven’t done that are important to you? Did anything remain unsaid that should have been communicated? Did you live enough, love enough, enjoyed enough, care enough?
But also: what if there really wouldn’t be a future? In a way it looks like that already, if there won’t be any major changes, that is where we are heading. In the coming years we will see if that awareness is strong enough, if we are willing to make some profound changes. If we will embrace this hot mess we have landed ourselves in, in order to get out of it.

“How do you make a difference?” Is it enough to limit your environmental footstep? To create awareness? To go out on the streets to protest? To boycot companies? No, it isn’t, but it is something. Things have to change on a different level, on a political and economic level, people in power have to do things differently and there should be different people in power. You won’t save the world by limiting your shower time or letting your voice be heard but you defenitely won’t change anything if you don’t care.
And keep an eye on what the other hand is doing. Not only your own, but especially the ones from people who are trying to convince you that they are doing the right thing.

“What is your neighbour’s name?” A lot of the people I talked to who read this, said they didn’t know the names of their neighbours and were a bit embarrassed about it. I realise that I know most of my neighbours’ names in Amsterdam through the packages I accept for them when the delivery man rings their doorbell in vain. A weird positive effect of buying online? They don’t ask for mine when they pick up their things though. We don’t take time to chat or sit down and have a glass of wine.
I don’t know the names of my human neighbours in the countryside (most of the time I live in a little house in the forest), but I know the names of my none-human neighbours. The stone marters I share the house with when it gets colder (they sleep in the attic), the goldcrest, the long-tailed tit, the wren, the spindle tree, the porcelain fungus.

“What war is this?” It is the only question I wasn’t asked directly but I borrowed it from Laurie Anderson who asked it many times and in the last year started her Norton Lectures with this question, without ever answering it.

I am not sure if doing this makes sense, if I should use my time differently, if I am making enough difference, but let’s see what happens if I stick to my plan to wear my suit every day, for as long as it is necessary, for as long as there are questions. Why not?