Change in life and stability created by ecological living
This year has been very turbulent. My partner and I moved in together just over a month ago. During that time, we realised that the relationship we had was not working for us. He shared childcare responsibilities equally with his ex partner. He had this commitment on Mondays, Wednesdays, every other Friday and Saturdays. At times, we could spend workdays together but that time was dedicated to work rather than us. It was a difficult situation to handle. I felt I was in a part-time relationship and my life was not in my control. We had no plans for the future. While he had achieved all his relationship goals before we met, I felt like I still needed stability and commitment in my life. Before we moved in together, both of us thought, I believe, that this relationship would work, that love would be enough to overcome the challenges of everyday life. But it was not this way. We decided to change the nature of our relationship.
Transitioning from being partners to being something else is psychologically challenging. For me, it's yet another change in addition to my recent move from Finland to Denmark. I don't know how we are going to navigate this space, where I am going to live, how we will be working as colleagues. There are many questions.
My mind was searching for stability amongst this chaos. And I began to contemplate my everyday ecological practices again. While I moved countries, changed my workplace, got together with a fellow human and changed the nature of my relationship with them, my practices remained more or less the same. These days, my mind was oftentimes returning to the "sufficiency list" (I wrote about it in this paper). I revisited the list again, and it has remained almost the same since around 2016.
Living simply, with few possessions helps me in many ways. Not only does it provide a sense of stability and having everything I need to live a comfortable life. It also reduces eco-anxiety as I feel that I am doing at least something, no matter how small the action is. Living simply has been good for my mental health. These days, connecting to something larger than me (nature) is particularly important. Since my childhood, I have felt a very strong connection with nature. It provided a sense of comfort, safety and security. Living in a way that is caring towards nature, e.g., via living with less, using natural materials, avoiding flying, only felt natural and organic to me. It never felt like a compromise or a sacrifice. I research small businesses and at times I was wondering how I would be running my own business if I had one. Just like the businesspersons I talk with, I would not want to work in a large company (though this is still what I do as an academic). I would run a business that would focus on small-scale production using local ingredients. The practices that I capture in my research make as much sense to me as to the businesspersons I learn from: there is something about having a caring attitude towards nature that manifests organically in ecological practices, in business and in everyday life of consumers. I've noticed in my own life that this attitude to nature is very stable. In my case, as in the case of many fellow humans I spoke to, it was formed in the early years of my life.