It has been a very tough semester in relation to this theme of passion. I am very aware of what I am or was passionate about, but now as I make my biggest transition in my life – after college- I am now face to face with the question: “What are you going to do with your life next?”. This question has made me dig deep into what am I truly passionate about. At first I was so sure, now it seems that it is a much more complicated picture. It appears that passions may not necessarily be so ingrained into one’s personality or identity, but can change, or burn out if you are at it for too long.
One of the biggest topics that I have followed closely in the ENVS program is social movements, and how they attempt to engage the public about their cause or in some sort of sense a passion. The different types of social movements such as grassroots movements that are very loud, protest and try to operate outside the system, and the more institutionalized movements that to influence from within the confines of the system. There are pros and cons to both methods of trying to enact change, for the grassroots movement, it can often lead to division and only appeal to a small number of individuals as it tries to implement a very narrow ideology. An extreme example that I followed were anarchists and members of the Earth Liberation Front, where they saw direct actions as one of the only means to enact change, and to literally fight back a slow changing system. The pros however, is that passion and energy it brings out of people to do things that can be seen as outrageous, and it sure makes a statement. For the the more institutionalized movement like the Sierra Club, or the Nature Conservancy operate through other means, and try to appeal to a vast range of people. They tend to take a more moderate approach as to not stir up to much feathers, and also try to be likable to sustain membership, which helps to keep the organization afloat to make that change. However, actions are slow, and sometimes ineffective, and sometimes these types of organizations lack the passion of the idealized grassroots organization. Both of these approaches have the same issue – ephemerality. For the grassroots movement, the exclusive mindset can wear people down and dissolve the group in the first place, and for the institutionalized movement, slow and compromise can sometimes become stagnating and your relevance becomes to fade.
I feel like my journey through the ENVS program compares to this spectrum, in that I came into Lewis & Clark with the un-dying passion to save the world, and do it by any means possible (the grassroots approach), but found that it can also be very limiting in terms of reaching a vast audience. I also was like the institutionalized movement/organization, and tried to compromise in order to reach the audiences, but ended up finding my message being diluted, almost muting my passion. I ended up jaded, grappling with the very complicated picture of environmental problems. However, I find that it is at these moments where passion and motivations start to fade, is the time to be persistent, and almost become a hybrid of these vastly different approaches. Use the passion of the grassroots movement, but in a way that is strategic and open-minded to make progress. I just watched “The Martian” and one of the lines that really stuck with me in this time of stagnation was this: “At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you… everything’s going to go south and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next.” (The Martian 2015).