I need to 'sort out' my mental health before I can ‘save the world’

And how this way of thinking includes some pretty big delusions.

This post was heavily inspired by Joanna Macy’s incredible book World as Lover, World as Self.

‘I just need to sort my mental health out first then I can go all in on saving the world.’

‘I just need to find a better spiritual balance then I can tackle all this environmental stuff.’

‘I just need to get my career in order then I can sort out these local issues.’ 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a variation of this sentence. I’ve said and journaled similar statements countless times myself. 

But I’m realising this way of thinking includes some pretty big delusions. 

This way of thinking includes the misconception that the world and the self are separate. That you can easily heal one (yourself, your mental health, your physical health) without healing the other (the environment, the waters, the air pollution). 

It’s the misconception we can live unaffected, content, and entirely happy when we know there are horrors going on in the world beyond our wildest imagination. When wars are ravaging entire populations, when countless species are going extinct, when near-daily natural disasters are devastating communities. The idea that we can live happily in our cabin in the woods independent of the world burning.

There’s no denying that it’s important to look after yourself. The whole put-your-own-oxygen-mask-on-first type of thing. But if we keep chasing the neverending tail of optimum mental health or utmost spiritual practice, we will never get round to healing our earth. (Because there is NO optimum mental or spiritual health on a devastated planet!) 

But however many ‘good’ or ‘sustainable’ actions we take–buying second-hand clothes, eating solely community agriculture programmes, living off grid–it’s impossible to entirely take control of our own lives. We will always be affected by the wider world, by Mother Earth, whether we believe so or not.

We are always interconnected with the Earth. We breathe her air, drink her water, eat her food. When she is out of balance, so are we.

 We can’t simply side-step society and expect it to fall away. Nor can we push it aside, ‘fix’ ourselves, and tackle it again when we finally ‘feel’ able.

It is and will always be a constant back and forth. A balance of looking after ourselves and pulling back from society, then digging in and looking after wider society, and perhaps overextending ourselves in the process. Too much focus on the latter will bring burnout and exhaustion, too much focus on the former is a never-ending tail chase wondering why we don’t ever feel fully better. 

I doubt we will ever find ourselves in perfect mental health, ready and energised to tackle the oncoming crisis. The number of times I’ve believed I’ve tackled and ‘solved’ all my major problems, only to face another, taller hill of problems the very next week. 

Humans have a LOT of work to do, a lot of emotional work, a lot of unlearning and unpicking. And in the work of healing the earth we are going to face these problems–and brand new problems–over and over again. We can’t do the work that matters whilst always staying balanced in perfect mental and spiritual health, I don’t believe it's possible. 

I’m trying to get comfortable with doing the hard things before I feel able to do them because, with the oncoming climate crisis, we will have to do hard things before we feel able to do them. In fact, in any facet of life we have to do hard things even if we feel unable. You will never be completely ready for anything. 

It’s not unusual or unsurprising that sometimes we feel uncomfortable, we feel sad or upset or icky even when it seems like nothing is wrong in our immediate surroundings, because the wider world and the goings on it can have massive effects on our health, even without us realising it. 

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee to fuel my work.