How do you keep going?

Is it time to throw in the towel?

Kia ora friends!

Extremely struggling with the last week of the school holidays here and school visits that haven’t worked out so well! And just life. So I thought I’d share a response to a question I was sent last week that I’ve been pondering. And maybe if you like it, it can become a regular feature. A Dear Emily of sorts. A dysfunctional advice column. Dolly Doctor from a dropout. A Q+A for the short weeks. A grasp at hope in a dying world etc…

Dear Emily

Every day I have been looking at the terrible things Donald Trump is doing and then seeing the terrible things our government is doing. It is making me feel like the end of the world is coming. And I feel so afraid and also I feel hopeless. You seem to have a lot of hope. Do you think what is the point of trying and what do you do if you feel that way? How do you keep going? Thank you, Alice.

Hi Alice,

First of all, I’m going to suggest a visit to your GP. Just to make sure your feelings of hopelessness are just a reaction to the world and not full blown depression.

I am just a simple writer. I cannot help you know if you’re about to have a good old Menty B or you’re just having a logical reaction to the world around us.

And if it is the big D or the big umm Anxiety, then I cannot help you prepare the scaffolding of your heart and soul to carry you through said mental breakdown - but never fear, your GP hopefully can. (And we all have breakdowns sometimes!)

But if you go to your GP and they say - ‘sounds like just a logical reaction to the world around us, babe’ - then maybe I can help?

Because this is a feeling I struggle with! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t struggle with hopelessness. I think it’s a very human feeling and maybe that’s where you can start?

When you feel hopeless and overwhelmed and like that hideous orange racist is going to send us hurtling toward a global nuclear war - STOP.

Stop and think - I am not alone right now. This feeling I have is one I share with millions of others (literally millions and millions). Right now, if Emily isn’t thinking about the "Dolphinarium" experiment or grain entrapment - she’s almost definitely thinking that it’s all hopeless.

Removing the isolation of that feeling is important. Because you’re feeling hopeless because you care. If you don’t care about your community or the environment or the world or climate change or genocide then chances are you’re cruising through this river of poo we call life just fine.

YOU care and that’s why it hurts. And others care too - and that’s why they’re hurting. So right now, immediately, recognise that you’re part of a huge population of people who genuinely care and are trying to make changes that will help our broken little world.

Not all of us are able to do all the caring all at once. We all need each other. One day I’ll feel stronger than you and will be able to act. And on a that day my neighbour will act on a day that their neighbour cannot and then you’ll be out tending to the sky on the nights where I struggle to see the stars.

Secondly, are we up to two? Who knows. Secondly, think of your bit as just a bit. You can’t change Donald Trump. But you can do your bit.

When Alfred “Alfie” Date passed away he’d lived for 110 years. I can’t imagine what he’d seen in that time. Life must have seemed so incredibly fast and slow all at once.

In the final weeks of his life Alfie saved the lives of hundreds of little penguins.

He did this, simply by knitting. He knitted little jerseys for penguins injured in an oil spill off the coast of Australia. Oil from the spill damaged the penguins’ feathers which meant ice cold water chilled their skin. Alfie’s sweaters warmed the penguins while they were treated and stopped them pecking at their feathers.

Each tiny jersey saved a life.

When I feel like it’s all pointless, I think of Alfie’s sweaters. I picture them in my mind and I think - I can do my bit.

You can do your bit.

Before he died, Alfie said in an interview - “It's a good way of getting along in life”.

He is right.

And we know this because he was not the only person knitting for penguins - hundreds of knitters answered the call by the Phillip Island Penguin Foundation to help. Hundreds of people, who did not know each other, were making little penguin jerseys for little penguins they would never see. There was no process of getting a little photo of a penguin in a jersey - no repayment. You weren’t paid for materials or reimbursed for the cost of postage.

Everyone just did their bit.

You can’t change the oil spill.

You can do your bit.

You can do your bit and your bit is enough. You can do your bit with all of the others doing their bit.

It may not be enough to save us but it is enough to show that we maybe we are all worth saving. And maybe that’s enough.

Arohanui, Emily x