Which stories are you telling ?
I spent lunchtime today with some desperate ten year old girls.
It wasn't intentional. The meeting was, but the despair wasn't planned. The meeting was part of some mentoring I'm doing for a beautiful climate-action project with a consortium of schools in the UK, and today's call was a check-in with the girls to hear about some of their ideas, thoughts and behaviour-changes to inspire climate action in their communities.
What I heard were stories of despair.
They were able to give me so many examples of all of the bad things us humans have done, all of the mess we've caused, all of the havoc we've reaped, and all I heard was frustration, anger, negativity, overwhelm. Whilst they were able to tell me a few stories of good things happening to both mitigate, respond, adapt and co-create healthier futures, the overall feeling was despair.
Worryingly, this is not unusual.
This scenario of negative storytelling is not unusual, neither are children experiencing such emotions. What it is, however, is unacceptable.
The stories we tell ourselves shape the world in which we live. Yet when we look around at the dominant stories children are hearing about the world, they are wholly negative. And that is not good enough.
Right now, I'm connected to literally hundreds of people, organisations, communities doing something beautiful in response to the crises we face. I'm surrounded by folks in the town where I live; my newsfeeds are full of good stories. These stories are real, are abundant and are all around us if we choose to look.
As, of course, are all of the other stories - those of despair, of devastation, of tipping points, of collapse, of extinction. It is vitally important to talk about the scale and extent of our crisis - our house as we know is on fire - and yet equally important is to empower ourselves and the children in our care with the stories of active hope; of the myriad actions, habit-changes, projects, communities, organisations 'doing things differently'. These stories are the ones that will get us out of bed every morning. And these stories are incredibly empowering to connect with.
Any of us working with young people - or who have young people in our care - have a collective responsibility to be sharing the stories of "what if" as well as "what is". Even more so if we're not currently sharing any stories at all with our kids because - like it or not - they're hearing the bad ones from other folks, from the news, from school, from the media.
It is hard to know what to say, but saying nothing or only telling of the problems is creating a tsunami of despair, of overwhelm and of increasing anxiety in young people. It does not need to be this way.
Learn how to have ‘courageous conversations’ with the young people in your community and help shift from anxiety to empowerment: www.thoughtboxeducation.com/courageous-conversations
#ecoanxiety #empowerment