I’ve never been a graceful person. Ask anybody and everybody who has spent more than a half hour of time with me. I’m a hot mess. I’m that awkward person who walks into somebody because they can’t decide which side to step around them on. I’m the girl that wipes out in public when it’s raining because her faith in the traction of her shoes is unfounded. My older sister was a ballerina for seven years, and the running joke in my family was that I would someday follow in her footsteps and be that one dancer in the performance that makes the rest of the dancers look amazing in comparison. So it surprised me that when I considered what overarching theme I had noticed personal growth in understanding in, the word balance came to mind.
The next thing that came to mind was Meeps’ post about our visit to the James when it was flooding. She wrote about the amazing and delicate icicles hanging from the roots of trees whose bases were usually untouched by the James’ waters, and about how it was incredible that a river so wild and untamed could produce such fragile treasures. The fact that the two were so opposite yet so connected demonstrates the balance nature achieves daily, even in irregular situations like the severe rainstorm that caused the James to flood. Storms come and go, and the environment has a natural way of recovering from whatever disturbances occur, given enough time. One idea that has stuck with me for the three years it’s been since I took Advanced Placement Environmental Science in high school is something my teacher said repeatedly over the course of junior year. Humans are the problem. If every last human being on the planet disappeared right now, the Earth would recover from the environmental degradation we’ve put it through and nature would regulate itself as it was meant to.
It seems as if some people are using nature’s ability to regulate itself as an excuse to abuse it, however. In Anne’s blog post about Exxon Valdez oil spill, she wrote about how the speaker she saw said that “the ecosystem would have recovered on its own if it was just let alone.” I see this as him exploiting a technicality to avoid taking responsibility for the mistakes made. Yes, the ecosystem would have recovered eventually. But no, that does not mean you can ignore what you’ve done.
Any scale will continue to be balanced as long as weight is added to each side equally. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, said Newton. This can be seen in the way nature reaps benefits from events as destructive as wildfires. It is demonstrated in the way the Earth keeps itself warm through the greenhouse effect, maintaining its capability to sustain life. It’s the Gaia hypothesis.
The concept of balance came into play at the Environmental Film Festival as well. During the few minutes of Chasing Ice that I got to see, the narrator spoke about how the natural tendency of the glaciers is to melt, then grow, then melt again and so on. They melt naturally. But they also grow naturally. Or used to, anyways. This was another time that a person used this technicality as loophole, and it irritated me immensely. The climate change doubters in the film argued that since glaciers melt naturally, there is no proof for the idea that humans are causing their increasingly rapid retreat. It’s ridiculous how often that argument is used to fight environmental movements. Nature will balance itself out, but if you’re responsible for disruption, you’re responsible for helping to fix it.
I’m being slightly hypocritical here. I have never, after all, achieved a perfect balance in my life. I’ve always felt like I was neglecting some part of my social, academic or personal life. Especially this semester. We’re nearly at March, and I’ve yet to be completely comfortable with my schedule. This semester my goal was to do my Sierra Club internship ten hours per week, my Sport Club Executive Council hours five hours per week, lead a Quidditch team to success at the World Cup, do well in my classes, be an active and involved member of Earthlodge and Pi Phi, maintain my relationship with my freshman year friends living in Grey Court while cultivating my relationships with my Quidditch, Earthlodge and Pi Phi friends, get back into shape by going to the gym daily, and get enough sleep to remain sane. My concept of balance sucks. But I like to think of myself as a self-regulating system similar to the Earth. Everything will balance out as long as I don’t let one particular sphere get too heavy. I find that when I’m sitting in my reflection spot in the gazebo, I feel more balanced than anywhere else on campus. I’ve come to realize that it’s because when I’m in the gazebo I can recenter myself free of outside influence. It’s my mini version of the solo spot I told the Earthlodgers about at Georgia’s apartment last semester during book club. As a refresher, during the summer after my junior year of high school I was a student at The Island School in the Bahamas, and part of the summer term was a 24-hour solo on a beach. I told the Earthlodgers how it was the best day of my life, because it was my life, 100% me. I think sometimes we confuse other people’s weight with our own, and that throws our scales off. Being alone once in a while helps achieve the balance I so desperately search for.
Being in Earthlodge this year has truly taught me what a multi-faceted and complex system the world is, and how complex the people living in it are. I’ve learned that the key to balance, in any context, is not to avoid putting weight on the scales overall, but to refrain from letting any one side carry too much. It’s a responsibility. Both to oneself and to the environment.