On Motivation
Let’s start this entry out with two questions; I want you to think of a response to each—either write down your answers or hold them in your mind for a few minutes. We’ll come back to them soon. Here are the questions:
What animates your struggle to fight climate change?
What powers your desire to save the planet from climate change?
Surely, a few of you may be wondering if I haven’t asked the same question twice, just worded differently, but I’d bet that for those of you that thought about your answers to both questions you’d see that they produced—or easily could produce—entirely different sets of responses.
Renewable energy is a mainstay in the topic of climate change but in this entry, we’ll talk about renewable energy generation in a new way. This entry is built around two quotes that I have been holding in my mind for a while now, and I have been away from publishing anything here for a few months as I have been trying to absorb their message.* The first quote is an oft-cited one for me, and it is from Sarah Jaquette Ray’s book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. The second is from an obscure set of films called—let me check my notes—Star Wars. I have definitely considered the two of these quotes separately. Still, around Thanksgiving here in the US, they randomly found their way to my brain simultaneously and I have been thinking about them ever since. Here they are:
“To burn out trying to resist a system that is fueled by burning things out is not resistance.” (Ray, pg. 41)
“That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” (Rose Tico, Star Wars Ep. VIII, The Last Jedi†)
How much of your motivation in this struggle for the planet is based on fighting what we hate, rather than on saving what we love? I’ll admit that for me, there was a lot of fighting what I hate—or rather, what I dislike as my own philosophy is to not hate anything that has the capacity to change—but focusing on the negative always necessitates finding the next negative thing to fixate on. That search for the next negative thing isn’t really a renewable resource; it requires us to use one fuel until it is gone and then move on to something different. Simply put, focusing solely on eliminating destructive practices will lead to burnout. It did for me.
I wrote previously about the importance of taking time off and recharging and, I did that, or at least, I tried. But I was still drawing energy from the motivational equivalent of coal; I was mining little chunks of concentrated energy from a finite and stratified source that involved digging deep and getting dirty. That is what sourcing your energy from detesting dark money in politics, greenwashing in both political and marketing campaigns, and anger from seeing the latest pipeline spill gets you. Don’t get me wrong, these things are bad, and the Field Guide (and Climate Designers as a whole) will always be about finding solutions to these problems through our specialties as designers. But that kind of fuel isn’t sustainable. I had reached a point where—after fueling myself with a mix of energies that over-relied on despair—I wasn’t motivated anymore. I had a breakdown and could barely be motivated to get through the day. This manifested in a lot of different areas of my life, not all of which are directly applicable to this topic. I had to find a new form of motivation.
Now, I hope that I am writing this to a set of people that haven’t found themselves this far down, motivationally and emotionally speaking. I hope that by writing it, that I can spare a few of you my experience. I had to learn to think of this struggle in terms of saving what I love. I had to sit with my climate grief and let it remind me of what is still here to preserve. I had to remind myself to fight for justice and not revenge. I had to reframe the whole effort for myself.
It’s what brings me back to the initial two questions at the top of this entry: what animates your fight, versus what powers your desire to save? How you approach this subject will affect how you take this effort into your jobs. Are we delving into the depths to source temporary fuel to reverse the course of climate change, or are we opening our arms to a more renewable and longer-lasting form of motivation: our families, friends, communities, and support systems? Do we celebrate each victory that gains us time and preserves our planet for future generations, or do we just look forward to the day that fossil fuel companies get their comeuppance? I think for a lot of us, the answer is going to be, “can it be a bit of both?” After all, justice—real, consequential, climate justice and restoration—will require some comeuppance. And I’d say, yeah, we can source our motivations from many different kinds of victories, but it will always be the vision of a habitable and equitable future that will spur more action than any horror stories of an uninhabitable earth filled with war and scarcity. So, what motivates you?
So, call-to-action time
What has motivated your efforts so far as a climate designer? Do you have any suggestions for the community or any wins that we can celebrate and take with us into our own lives and jobs?
Head over to the Climate Designers community space on Mighty Networks and let us know, and while you’re at it, share any comments you have about this entry!
*I have written about why I have been absent in a note that I left in the Field Guide to Climate Design Circle over on our Mighty Networks site.
†Given that the first quote was from someone named Ray, you have no idea how much satisfaction it would bring me to have had this quote come from the sequel trilogy’s main protagonist, Rey. Like, the tendency that I have for puns and wordplay leads me to make the corniest of jokes, but I’ll leave it there and won’t Force the issue any further.
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This entry was written by
Matt McGillvray
Matt is a designer and illustrator living near Portland, Maine, and has been working for more than a decade doing branding, illustration, web design, print design, social media posts, and even a little SEO.
When not designing he’s usually reading, writing, or running. His current big writing project is a book about design and climate change. He is a chronic teller of puns and will not apologize for that.