Awakening the Eco-Child to Save the Planet
When I was a young boy my parents took me on my first summer vacation. On the drive out of the city of Chicago where we lived, we had to drive through Gary, Indiana. As we approached Gary, I noticed what I thought was a bad storm on the horizon. As we got closer, I saw a giant wall of black smoke filling the atmosphere in front of us. Suddenly I saw a sea of smoke stacks billowing out black smoke as far as the eyes could see. There must have been hundreds of them with some also shooting out giant fiery flames. We drove into the blackness and the air smelled like rotten eggs and I felt sick to my stomach and horrified at the sights around me. It was like hell on earth. I cried and begged my parents to turn the car around. They told me to try to calm down, that it was no big deal and that I would get used to it.
Of course, as I grew up into an adult, I did get used to it as most of us have. I slowly buried my awareness of my connection with the earth and built up the normal “adult” wall of cognitive dissonance. Now years later, this awareness is being re-awakened by the children. Listening to and watching young people like Swedish teenage eco-activist Greta Thunberg is stirring deep primal memories of the connection to the earth I naturally felt as a child and awakening me to the true impact of my own and all of our actions on our planet.
