Finding paradise in hell
Disasters, community, and a glimpse of another way
Hey friends,
What a week. It feels like half the world is on fire, underwater, or under threat. Disasters, destruction, and devastation have dominated the headlines. I, like many, have spent days anxiously awaiting news of friends. For now, it seems everyone is OK, but OK is subjective, and I know millions more are not.
Seeing all the photos and stories have cracked me open. There is good and there is so much bad, all at once. On one side of the planet, we have a “natural” disaster - one amplified by human choices, but ultimately out of our control - and on the other, a wholly man-made mess. It's hard to see how, in the same breath, people can lament biblical damage while actively enacting the same - or worse - on others.
No one deserves this.
Yet, the more I lose my faith in humans, the more it grows, too. It feels like such a juxtaposition to say that, but seeing the people on the ground helping each other always brings tears to my eyes and reminds me of all the things I love about us.
I tend to stray away from getting too political here. It's been a place I've explored and touched on other massive parts of our lives, from death and dreams to creativity, consciousness, and pretty much everything in between, but I still shy away from some of those other big topics.
In this age of cancel culture, it feels tough to talk about anything even slightly controversial online; like anything you say can or will be used against you. It doesn't have to take much for it to be misconstrued, taken out of context, and turned into a weapon of our own creation.
Often it's easier to stick in our lane. If we write about our lives, no one can tell us it isn't true. If we write about things we know, no one can tell us we're wrong.
I, like many of my creative mentoring clients, feel this need to know and understand something deeply before I put it out in the world. I might write what I want to understand better behind closed doors, but for me to share it with the world, I feel like I have to understand something - or somewhere - deeply. Unshakeably.
It's funny how the more we use our voices in the world, or at least this online one, the more stifled our voices can become. The more we feel like we have to lose. Add in a career or a personal brand/business and it all gets very messy.
Yet, I also love the kind of open conversation you can have with someone you trust, even when you don't agree on something. Where you respect each other enough to show up to the table. To listen. To try and meet them where they are. To maybe even be open to having your mind changed.
I want this to be a place like that.
As humans, we’re incredibly curious creatures. We're always learning new things about the world and have this incredible gift of being able to absorb new information or discover new things and change our minds - the minds that, up until 30-odd years ago, people believed stopped growing once we hit adulthood.
We were born to live in the grey, not the black and white.
For most of my life, I’ve been fascinated by all our stories and histories; especially the untold ones. I have a… healthy distrust of the world and its systems, and the stories that can be used against us; manipulated to make us feel or think a certain way, including the media industry - which I've been on the periphery of for the last 11 years. Let’s just say there’s a reason I always call myself a writer, never a journalist.
I also, unfortunately, believe that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. And right now I don't have much hope that humans, as a species, will be able to change before things - like genocide or climate disasters - get much worse. But I do have hope that in those terrible days, we'll find a new way.
I just wish it didn't have to come to that first.
This week, I’ve been reading two very different books, Sapiens, which I’ve been slowly reading since 2020(!) and have now finally finished, and Rebecca Solnit's 2009 book, A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster.
If I'm totally honest, Sapiens made me pretty depressed about the state of the earth and humanity, but I also found it fascinating reading about how we’ve ended up in this mess at the same time. It kind of reminds me how getting a name for an illness makes us feel better than feeling like there's something wrong with us but we don't know what it is.
On the other hand, A Paradise Built in Hell has given me hope. I’ve had Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby on my TBR list for a while, but I hadn’t heard about her activism work before. In many ways, I was thrilled to see that she’d been able to put into words the things I never could, about how disaster can bring communities together - how it can give us hope; show us a way to a different world.
I've officially done disaster relief work twice. First in Nepal after the earthquake, and secondly in Guatemala, after Volcan de Fuego erupted in 2018. I have a lot of opinions on NGOs - not all of them good, understandably - but the work I did there and the experiences I had were some of the best of my life.
Yet, for years I always felt kind of conflicted about how much I loved it and why. Even as a writer, I've found it tough to put into words the way it feels to do that work. To be on the ground in the wake of a disaster, having a good time making sandwiches for people who’ve lost everything.
I don't think there's any better analogy about living in the grey.
Was I devastated and was my heart broken? Yes.
Was it…almost joyful to be able to be of service? Yes.
Does it still feel weird to write that here, especially in the light of all those suffering around the world right now? Also, yes.
As someone who hasn't really tried to explain that to anyone outside of a trusted few before, reading Rebecca Solnit's words - and listening to her On Being interview with Krista Tippett - have been like a balm for my soul. She's able to articulate - far better than I - how disasters can give us a glimpse of paradise, even in the depths of hell. How, through the challenges and the distance from “real life”, we can all find glimpses of a humanity we’ve long been told doesn’t exist.
She writes:
“Disaster throws us into the temporary utopia of a transformed human nature and society, one that is bolder, freer, less attached and divided than in ordinary times, not blank, but not tied down.”
Most disaster and apocalyptic movies peddle a very different conclusion. You don't see the shared humanity; the risking of our lives to save neighbours and strangers alike. There's no temporary utopia, where all are equal and worthy; there's a hero and their supporting cast, and then everyone else.
I wonder if that's why I hate those movies. The dog-eat-dog selfishness, the survival of one person above all else. It isn't real. Every single time I've come close to disaster, I've seen the opposite. Never once did I feel unsafe in disaster zones. Never once did I fear for my life - at least from any people. Earthquakes and fires were another story, but not one for today.
All I saw, at least within the communities on the ground, were people coming together. Supporting each other. And it wasn't just limited to disaster zones, either.
Here, in Australia, when an out-of-control bushfire threatened people and property in my neighbourhood last March, we all banded together. I met more of my neighbours in that one day than in the previous three years I’d lived here. It was incredible to see everyone open their hearts and their homes.
When I lived in Cambodia and shit hit the fan; when people got sick or died or other disaster struck, most people ran towards it, not away. When we were broke and struggling, we shared what we had. We lifted each other up. We were all equal; all worthy.
My ex saved a tourist's kid from the ocean, even though he almost drowned in the process. When a fire broke out on the beach, holidaymakers and locals alike ran into the ocean and formed human chains to pass up buckets of water. Strangers and neighbours risked their own lives going into burning buildings to grab gas bottles so a big disaster didn't become a bigger one.
There was a real brother-helps-brother mentality.
It may not have ended well - basically a real life version of Alex Garland’s The Beach - but our community, which had literally been forged in fire, was the only place in the world I've ever truly felt like I belonged. It was unfiltered humanity at its finest; we saw the worst - but we also saw the best. There was grace, understanding, and not much risk of being cancelled - unless you really fucked up.
Yet, while these disasters - and this glimpse of the power and potential of a different way of life that I and a few others have managed to see - may remind us of the good in people, they also show us the cracks in societies and systems. Cracks that are only getting bigger.
The more you see, the harder it becomes to unsee.
As this past week has shown us, it doesn't take much for paradise to become hell. I just wish there was an easier way for us to use these experiences of hell to build ourselves a better world, too.
Here's hoping it doesn't take total and utter devastation and mutually assured destruction for us to get there.
Thanks for walking through the grey with me.
I love you.
Cx
PS: If you want to donate to those struggling around the world right now, I highly recommend World Central Kitchen. They're on the ground in the eastern US and the Middle East, bringing fresh water and food to those needing it most.
I worked with them in Guatemala and they were phenomenal. I cannot even explain the difference between watching certain other… better-known charities in action and them. One was a well-oiled machine, the other was a mass of suits and red tape. I know who I'd want to help me.
Go well this week. The world feels heavy, but there's so much beauty here, too. X
I shy away from talking about world news, too, mainly because I find it hard to put words to my thoughts and feelings. I find it quite overwhelming, which is a privilege really...if all I can feel is overwhelmed I probably ought to be saying more.
Your post reminded me of something I once shared with my eldest—something Fred Rogers said about seeing scary things on the news as a child. It's comforting for kids, but also for me. It gives me hope.
'My mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember her words and feel comforted knowing there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in the world.'"