Finding My Voice

Finding My Voice

I opened this blog, and set the title to it, about a year ago. On Behalf of Nature. So it's been sitting here, reserved and waiting, titled but devoid of content. 

Somehow, tonight is the night. I know at least one primary reason why. We've occupied our mountain home full-time for about six weeks. Only in the last two days, though, have I carved out the space on my office console to even think about writing, or conducting any other kind of business. This evening, I came downstairs to the office to pay bills first, then attend to social commentary online, and to straighten up even more. Then came the impulse to plop back down and see if I could even recall where my blog space resides. I could. And so now, it begins.

I'm calling these reflections "On Behalf of Nature," because I wish to add more meaning to other activities I've been engaged with for a significant portion of my adult life. After thirty years of studying birds, and after adding the study of botany and native plants for the past twenty, I need to do more. I'd like to bring under one umbrella what my study of birds and plant biology is leading me to. And that, simply stated, would be to offer a more definitive voice to my concerns about nature. The environmental movement as it exists now is an effort to provide such a voice. Without this movement, there would be measurably less of a check on the expansive destruction of our planet's natural resources. My decision, then, is to add my own voice to that larger chorus. I need to feel that I am pointing my efforts in that same direction. 

I keep a whiteboard in my psychotherapy office. This is an office, by the way, that I am soon closing in order to begin an overdue "retirement." I've used this whiteboard over the years to illustrate points during a session, or sometimes just to place a quote or sentence or two to express a thought I'm having about relationships, human behavior, or the like. But in these latter days, I've begun to be much freer with the scope of sayings and texts I place on the whiteboard. I seem to be loosening up as I prepare to close the door on my practice.

So before seeing my first patient one recent day, I wrote the following: "Without nature, humans eventually would cease to exist. But without humanity, nature would do quite well." The statement is scientifically accurate in fact. There is no doubt of that. The natural world evolved for scores of millions of years without homo sapiens. With the human race, and especially within the last millennium, nature has suffered  major defeats and decline. Now we are facing unprecedented numbers of species extinctions by the end of this century. This is directly the result of human-caused changes to the natural environment.

But I wondered how my patients would respond to these words, since they were off-topic from my usual entries on this 12x18-inch board. As I expected, some asked questions about the meaning of the statement, and asked me to elaborate on it. Still others, aware of my love for the natural world, commented on how apparently I had already begun my retirement! But without exception, everyone agreed with the statement after understanding it, and expressed concern or sadness about the abuse we visit upon the natural world. Some even thanked me for stimulating them to consider what more they might do for the environment. Interesting, don't you think? Without setting out to accomplish this, I actually had spoken on behalf of nature to these unsuspecting clients. And no one asked for their money back! Each person responded with some level of appreciation. 

So that is the real reason I am finally stepping out into this topic. Quite unaware of what was happening that week, I'm now convinced that I didn't start this topic. It's more like the topic started m!. And my clients, observing that, gave me a thumbs up that it would likely fly. So now it's my intent to move on with it.

So this is the little story of how I hope to find my voice. On Behalf of Nature. 

Joel Hitt
Clayton, Georgia