Begin by centering yourself in the middle of the mirror
Keep your feet shoulder width apart
Stand tall with your shoulders back
Head straight
Now slowly raise your arms out beside you until they are parallel to the ground
Stop
Take a moment to forget about those around you
Look at yourself
Notice the power in your stance,
The weight of your arms
Notice the space you take up
How do you situate yourself within the world?
Look at yourself
Arms stretched out wide, open, awaiting an embrace
Look at your overbearing, all-consuming presence
Look at yourself because there is nothing else to look at
Are you uncomfortable?
In the past 100 years over 500 species have gone extinct
Baiji dolphin
Pinta tortoise
Golden toad
Caspian tiger
Pyrenean ibex
Accelerating with reckless abandon
We are the drivers of mass extinction
Do you feel an ache in your heart?
When did you stop giving death the same reverence as life?
When did you forget how to grieve?
Did you ever learn to sit with your sorrow?
Tell me, when did we lose consciousness of our own frailty?
Wait and watch as everyone lines up to await their turn on the cross
For we will all pay for these sins of humanity
This is what happens when we disentangle our identities from our relationship to others
When we disentangle the notion of self and community
What happened to kinship, to our deeply adding connections?
We are in the midst of an emotional collapse
We are in the midst of an emotional collapse and are you still looking at yourself?
Don’t break that eye contact
This is the greatest loneliness
Welcome to The Anthropocene: A New Era of Solitude