Hank Green On Seeing Both
Good morning John, I've been a little bit stuck recently. I think I've been stuck because I often don't know what the right thing is to look at, like what's the right thing to see.
I went on vacation to Seattle last week, it was the first real vacation I've been on in a long time, it's the first real vacation Orin has ever been on, and we did a lot of fun stuff and it was very good.
One of my favorite parts, and he liked it a lot too, was just watching the ships come into and out of the port. Orin would shout whenever we saw a new ship coming or going and we would run to the window and watch the tugs push it where it was going. And then we would watch all of those containers, that had who knows what inside of them, getting moved around the port. And get ready to be shipped inland or head over seas
And I can look at these ships, and hate them. Burning 30 gallons of fuel every mile they travel, pumping C02 and other pollutants into the atmosphere. And I can look at them and love them. People, working hard to engage in the tremendous collaborative effort of delivering, for all I know, Awesome Socks or Microcosmos microscopes.
I can look at them and think that they are ugly, I can look at them and think that they are beautiful. I can look at them and think that they are old and out dated, I can look at them and think that they are a tremendously recent innovation. I don't know what the right way to see these things is!
I'm not in crisis, I just had a lovely vacation, I have lots of support, but being 41 years old in the year 2022 has not given me the kind of clarity I expected from middle age. If anything, things have gotten less clear as I have gotten older.
I used to think that the scars we've left on this planet, and on each other were purely the result of malice, or evil, or at best ignorance. But now, I look at those scars and I still see the ones made by hate and ignorance but I also see a lot that are just made by living, by love, by trying, by pushing maybe too hard, too fast. Because of hubris, or maybe just because of excitement and joy and hope and community and mutual thriving and fun!
I look around me, right now, sitting at my desk and I see things that have done harm, my iced tea bottle, the chicken sandwich that I shouldn't have bought, the websites that let us share with each other and tear at each other. But I'm also surrounded by things that I love, like my iced tea, and the chicken sandwich that I can't quit, and the websites that let us share (laughing) with each other and tear at each other.
I'm not saying that I don't think awful, cynical, greedy people exist, they do. Some people carefully cultivate fear like it's a crop for them to harvest on election day. We are surrounded by harm and we are surrounded by aid, we are surrounded by joy and surrounded by sorrow.
I guess I do know now that nothing gets done if there is no room for joy, I know that. Nothing gets done if we only see the harm and nothing gets done if we don't see the harm. So I don't know which thing to see more. I don't know if I'm seeing the right amount of joy or the right amount of harm or the right amount of grief or the right amount of aid. But I know, that I have to see both.
And there is a way of doing this where I see one, and then the other, and then the one, and then the other, the horror, then the beauty, then the grief, then the joy. But that way of doing it doesn't seem to be helping me get anything done. So maybe there's a way to look at the world and see both at the same time.
John, I'll see you on Tuesday