Constrain me

Plus: tell the government climate action is crucial

Hi all, 

I’ve been letting some things simmer, trying to make thoughts cohere. One thing that I think of often is the idea of constraints, and how often constraints (especially those that are self-imposed) can have benefits. For example, living in a rental apartment means endless expansion and home renovations are off the table, which frees up a bunch of money, time, and mental space. (I have to remind myself of this often, especially when I’m fording collapsing piles of stuff in my nightmare storage closet.)

I realized I’d already written about this elsewhere, years ago, although without an explicitly eco context. Since most of you haven’t read that piece, I thought I’d share this letter from November 2018 while I keep thinking about what I want to say in 2024. It seems I am forever returning to similar themes, which could be a way of saying I’m a bit dense, but I think it’s more that some of these ideas are so countercultural they need constant reaffirmation.  

Most of today’s post is old news, but please do read to the end for an important action item with a pressing deadline!

---

My friend and I just spent two nights at an off-grid cabin: no electricity, no fridge, no running water or flush toilet. When I tell people about this bare-bones expedition, they have one of two reactions: enthusiasm or complete horror.

I started in the first camp and happily remained there, found our retreat defined by a soothing, encompassing ease despite peeing in a bucket in a cold outhouse. We coddled the cast-iron wood stove as you would an infant, checking on it often, coaxing it and feeding it, anticipating its needs. We went for leisurely walks around the farm and woods around the cabin, counted cats in the barn and squinted to read the names on cows’ ear tags. We followed the river to see where it would go, observed interesting trees, crouched to take in the red and orange leaves sealed under the ice on the pond. We drank warm beverages and wine, we dined on simple meals, some we’d prepared ahead of time and heated up on the propane stove. We lounged and read books by the light of oil lanterns that Laura Ingalls would have recognized. We talked easily, and often, the way old friends can. With few chores and no real responsibilities beyond the ravenous stove, it was almost a return to childhood. Do what you feel like. Be where you are.

The cabin

It sounds idyllic, and it was, mostly (with only a couple small debacles around that wood stove baby), and there are lots of reasons for that, but one is that it highlights what is essential: shelter and warmth, good food, good friends, time in nature. When we strip away so many distractions we can see the importance of what remains.

I feel this way of my year of buying no new clothes: it has tuned out the crowded marketplace crying, “New! better! best!,” helped me step off the hedonic treadmill and focus on all that I have already and on other things that matter more. I recently had coffee with a journalist who was in the middle of being vegan for six months, and though it wasn’t easy (“You get the point that you see a lentil and you could just die,” she said), she saw it as a way to recalibrate, to pay attention to what she actually needed, to see what she could live without.

All the inspirational gurus, all the marketers, they try to convince us that our potential for happiness and success is stratospheric, if we just work harder, spend more, are more positive, more connected, and also more disconnected, if we keep up, slow down, know it all, be it all.

While at the cabin I was finishing Heather Havrilesky’s sharp, insightful collection of essays about modern life, What If This Were Enough?, and in it she zeroes in on so much of what I’d been thinking about lately.

Many of us learn to construct a clear and precise vision of what we want, but we’re never taught how to enjoy what we actually have. There will always be more victories to strive for, more strangers to charm, more images to collect and pin to our vision boards. It’s hard to want what we have; it’s far easier to want everything in the world. So this is how we live today: by stuffing ourselves to the gills, yet somehow it makes us more anxious, more confused, and more hungry. We are hurtling forward — frantic, dissatisfied, and perpetually lost.

We think of limitations as obstacles, as something to be smashed through like prison walls. But constraints also clarify, they help you focus and prioritize, they allow you to savour success and contentment. Every day, of course has constraints, every lifetime. Maybe one day we will upload our conscious selves to the Cloud, have an infinite life in an infinite space with infinite rooms. But after we’ve dissolved all these limits and boundaries, we may still find ourselves adrift in an endless sea, eyes forever locked on an unreachable horizon.

This is not to say that constraints are the final word, that no one should try to improve their circumstances, improve themselves, improve the world. Oppression is a constraint. But I do think we need to get friendly with some of our constraints, which is to say get more friendly with ourselves and our lives. But instead of looking beyond them to what we aren’t, let’s look to what we are. Our better, happier self might not be found by forever chasing it, remaining a person in perpetual motion; like hunters, we can’t forget the importance of standing still and paying attention.

---

Are there constraints in your life you’ve embraced? Share them in the comments or drop me a note.

---

Action opportunity

Until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, March 28, the government of Canada has a survey asking for input on setting 2035 climate goals. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes to complete, but I think it’s tremendously important to show the government that people want strong climate action, even if it’s a bit painful in the short term, and that we need strong government leadership and regulation. (Seth Klein’s A Good War makes a very thorough case for the benefits of government-led mass climate mobilization.) It’s also an interesting exercise in weighing your own priorities. At the end of the survey, you get to see the amalgamated responses, which is pretty interesting. (Try not to let the denialists get you down.) Remember, among rich countries, Canada is an extreme emissions reduction laggard, as this chart from Barry Saxifrage shows. 

We need to do better, not just for ourselves, but for the entire world. These goals (and the mechanisms to support them) will determine, in the words of climate scientist Peter Kalmus, “whether life on Earth collapses into a shadow of its former magnificence [. . . ] whether humankind thrives and evolves or descends into a long and brutal dark age on a less habitable planet.”

So please tell the government ambitious action is not only desirable, but required.

In the meantime, take care out there, and savour the next spring bloom you see for me.

xo
Jen

P.S. At the beginning of the year, I talked about moving money and I successfully did part 1, moving old investments away from RBC and writing them a letter to say why. This was surprisingly easy and even lucrative, thanks to a 0.5% matching offer. It’s put wind in my sails to move my final accounts to a credit union so that my banking is aligned with my values.

Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch. Opening photo is the green wall in the expanded greenhouse at the Toronto Zoo.