It’s like there is this wave of exhaustion sweeping over the planet, sometimes since Covid appeared. It hit me hard in 2020 and kept tumbling me around like a pebble for three strange years. I had to unbelieve everything that had made sense to me before. The productivity and the self-abuse it really is, and where it connects to the abuse of others, of the earth, of everything kind and soft, the ‘but it’s the best system we have’ and the ‘but there’s nothing a single person can do’. I went back to stare at nothing behind the garden bushes, listened to birds, enjoyed the presence of rocks. I’m not sure that’s the direction everyone must take, but a lot of people seem to have had similar experiences, with a lot of re-connection with the non-human.

In slowly emerging from the turmoil I find myself a different person, and a I see how eerily similar things happen to so many other people - the burnout and the return to the small and quiet, and a lot of before’s ego and separation just vanishing. It really like some societal change, some change of common mindset, is happening. It is a little like when a child feels a response to a prayer, and a little like growing up.