It seems from my experience, that maybe the ability to face challenges with gratitude, and receive pretty much anything and everything we’re given by nature with thankfulness (or at least non-judgmental acceptance) is the biggest lesson I keep coming back to in rewilding my own heart and mind.
I know for many of us (including me, for sure) rewilding is often motivated (at least initially) by a profound sense of dissatisfaction with life (modern life). Yet one of the most interesting things for me in the process of rewilding has been how my core orientation has been shifting over the years from dissatisfaction/resentment/ingratitude (with modern society) to greater joy and appreciation for life (in nature).
I recently wrote a few essays about this here, if folks are interested:
So what have other people’s experiences been in this regard? Anyone resonate with this? Any other thoughts?
I have to agree with you on this. If there isn’t something good in this world then why would we want to fight for anything or change anything.
I think gratitude is more than just a fundamental to rewilding, but it’s fundamental to living well. (Well maybe rewilding and living go together) I know that the quality of my life has increased an incredible amount when I started to give thanks every day. I used to be horribly depressed before and that one skill has done more to give me the energy to get up everyday and get back on the path.
If you look at civilization you will se a real lack of thanfulness for what they have. Good or bad, civilization has made life easier. (I actually believe that the ease of life is part of the problem) Yet, find people grateful for that. They seem few and far between. Yet it seems that if you got to a hunter gatherer culture you would find huge parties of thanksgiving when anything happens.
I would answer the question posed by the topic with a resounding yes!
This thread strongly resonates with some things running through my mind recently. These ideas coalesce only in fits and spurts, so I apologize for their fragmentary nature.
I think Joe has unearthed something very important here. We have a choice about how we can approach life. We can live a life of gratitude for those that give us life and sustenance. We can fall into depression, despairing at the damaged state of the world. We can live a life consumed by anger, raging against the cumulative cruelty of humans. Or we can live a life of selfish indifference, not caring whether our existence leaves the world worse off. Although we each carry some amount of depression, anger, and selfishness, I do not see how long-term we can build a life on a foundation of such feelings.
But how does one live a life of gratitude? Derrick Jensen’s take on the predator-prey relationship comes to mind. To roughly paraphrase from memory, eating salmon means taking on the responsibility for continuing salmon. To me, though, that still falls short. I can continue salmon by raising them in industrial farms on artificial food and nutrient sources. Industrial society invests significant resources into continuing selected varieties of cows and chickens.
To me, living a life of gratitude means living for those who support your life. If salmon die to give me life, I must live for the salmon. Through my actions, I should leave salmon better off than I found them. And this goes beyond food. My tribe works to support my life, so I live for my tribe and try to leave my tribe better off.
Living to serve those that serve us. Others have said it before in other ways – give support/get support, even “do unto others…” gets at this idea – but I try to set that as my goal.
Or to try to boil it down to a sound byte: I have breath, blood, and a beating heart, and I thank the sun, sea, sky, and soil for giving them to me.
To me, living a life of gratitude means living for those who support your life. If salmon die to give me life, I must live for the salmon. Through my actions, I should leave salmon better off than I found them. And this goes beyond food. My tribe works to support my life, so I live for my tribe and try to leave my tribe better off.
Nice. I really resonate with that. And with this that Joe wrote, for sure:
I think gratitude is more than just a fundamental to rewilding, but it's fundamental to living well. (Well maybe rewilding and living go together) I know that the quality of my life has increased an incredible amount when I started to give thanks every day. I used to be horribly depressed before and that one skill has done more to give me the energy to get up everyday and get back on the path.
Yeah, good stuff.
That’s the main thing for me these days, the path of rewilding just makes life better the more I follow it, it seems…even as it presents greater and greater challenges – and some of them pretty darn uncomfortable. Hope that continues to be true as the path leads on…
My big motivation for “rewilding” is to attain a higher level of connection with the landscape and its non-human inhabitants. I’ve found cultivating a sense of gratitude and carrying that with me to be uber important. I’m in a personal mentoring program with Jon Young right now, and gratitude - in the form of thanksgiving ceremonies, sweat lodges, grieving ceremonies - is one of the most important lessons he teaches (aside from finding a sit spot, which perhaps is yet another exercise in developing a sense of gratitude).
I definitely resonate with what everyone has been saying here about gratitude. I’d like to make a clear distinction between feeling gratitude this way and the kind of gratitude that modern culture most commonly espouses, which essentially boils down to gratitude for having “stuff”, & the luxuries of modern life. I’ve found that appreciating “luxury” does absolutely nothing towards making those luxuries increase my happiness and fulfillment in life. In other words, for me gratitude for what is truly important in life (why we are alive) does not in any way feeling gratitude for the “good” things that modern society gives us.
Therefore, whether I feel gratitude or feel dissatisfaction at any given moment totally depends on whether I am at that moment experiencing true living (as we were meant to, connected with the earth & others, etc), or whether I am surrounded by modern civilization (and its “comforts”). When I am outside close to the land, I feel great satisfaction & appreciation, and when I’m driving a car I feel great dissatisfaction and criticism for what I see around me. They both exist within me (and don’t at all cancel each other out) - the difference is one of context.
What I definitely DON’T feel is much gratitude for the so-called benefits of modern life (central heating, modern houses, etc), because if anything they reduce my happiness. I also feel that modern luxuries actually make us unhealthy, because the more we push the edges of our comfort zone, the stronger and healthier we become (physically and mentally). And of course the planetary cost of the modern way of life is completely unjustifiable. The great exception of the easy availability of food, which I greatly appreciate since my ability to feed myself directly from the land is still so limited. Of course, food isn’t a modern thing, just the buying of it in grocery stores (which I hate), and food is nourishing regardless of where it comes from, thus I feel huge gratitude for it always.
I read your rock-survival-tool blog and it was very moving. Thanks for sharing that. I really am needing to hear this kind of stuff again. Been away from it all for too long.
Your blog is fantastic, Glenn, I’ll definitely be back to read more.
If not gratitude, then at least a keen eye on the lookout for what’s good, useful, advantageous and/or satisfactory. I think in the wild we’d have to be always mindful of what we had that was essential to our survival and appreciate it through appropriate upkeep. In civilization things are either disposable, easily reacquired, serviced by a “professional,” or otherwise taken care of so that we can just “sit back and enjoy.” If the only way we can stay active in the maintenance of the good things in our life is to say thanks, then that’s probably at least a small step in the right direction.
Hey all,
I always feel gratitude when I go into nature. I made some acorn butter the other day, and I reflected on how amazing it is that one only has to listen to nature’s rhythm’s to be provided with bountiful gifts; I found acorns in incredible abundance while camping in the local hills. What a wonderful world, where delicious food (real wealth?) does grow on trees!
