One Last Breath, and Then Your First
I can honestly say, this has been one of the most challenging courses I’ve taken in the four years of my post-secondary degree. At times, the blog post prompts were the easiest thing I could do, and other times they were the last thing I wanted to think about because I had no idea how to approach it. Over the course of the past three months, the challenge to my creativity has skyrocketed. It’s hard on its own to push yourself to be creative when you’re busy or stressed with other classes, but at the peak of the semester when it feels like there’s so much going on and my mental health feels as fragile as tissue paper, doing something as simple as making a blog post which is supposed to be about my joy and excitement for nature and science communication seems like Mount Everest, especially since at times like this, I’m not really happy, or excited, or optimistic about anything, in fact I sometimes feel like I’m hardly hanging on by a thread and yet I have to either muster up some joy or, more often than not, completely fake it just to get a graded blog post out because neither my wallet nor my mental health can afford to fail a class.
Onto the prompt; moving forward in my endeavors to become a Nature Interpreter or something of the sort (or simply to use the quite helpful skills I’ve learned in this class) I’ll be eager to keep in mind, and question myself as to what type of backgrounds my audience may have (the experiences they’ve likely had, and what makes them tick) in order to effectively spark their interest and show them how our connections and relationships with nature are equally important as the relationships we hold with the people around us.
Of course, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to reach every person in the way you intended, if at all, and that’s part of the process. Even though your audience is there because they already have an interest in what your talk/walk will be about, the ways you decide to approach the topic (influenced by your personal beliefs and experiences) may cause some in your audience to turn off their ears and try to interpret the environment for themselves. And that’s okay too, because I’ll admit there are interpretive walks where I’ve tuned out because I couldn’t really care less about what the guide was saying anymore (because I had misinterpreted what the talk/walk would be about/the stance it would take on the topic) or simply because I could tell they had a very different opinion related to the topic than I did and it was influencing everything they chose to say about the topic. Which, no shade to them, they can do as they please, I simply didn’t show up to the right tour, and I may not be lead to the revelations and discoveries that they intended for me to be lead to; but I’ll end up guiding myself to my own revelations, if any. It’s the same for audience members that I may have one day; they may not reach the revelations that I intended, but as long as the experience that they had helped them to feel some sense of clarity and peace then my job is done.
Obviously, I’ll always hope that the intended effect is the effect experienced by all members of my audience. To give my audience an new personal understanding of their place in our world, the importance of their actions in a big world where they feel like a drop in the ocean. To illuminate to my audience the terrifying beauty of the interconnectedness of the world, and the wrongs that our world has endured at our hands, that one group of humans have experienced at the merciless hands of another group, in order to educate a new “generation” (that is becoming better educated on a topic brings them into a new realm of life and feels nearly rejuvinating; the beginning of a new life) and change the future of all of mankind. To conserve the natural beauty of the world, in order for future generations to be inspired by it, to be able to use it to understand the importance of the relationships and connections among all living organisms; sentient and not.
In every dull moment of mundane life on Earth, or every sad moment that drags on your feet like lead, we gratefully accept anything to give us that feeling of hope again. Whether through song or story, we learn new things to broaden our minds and to give us the ability to look upon this world with fresh eyes. When we were children, we’d beg our parents to tell us stories of when they were growing up, to hear that we’re not alone in the way we’re feeling and that life gets better; to learn of the bad things people have done in anger and fear, and provoke ourselves to feel inspired to never repeat those people’s mistakes; to learn of our place in the world, through the life, full of discoveries and learning, of a fellow human being; to feel connected to another living being, and feel even if for only a moment that we’re not alone and people care to feel a connection with us, because they give us their time; the most valuable thing in any living organism’s life.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
image credit: https://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/earth/pale-blue-dot.html
If I’m to become a nature interpreter, I’ll likely only work with small groups (10 or less) because I feel more disconnected with bigger groups, like no one’s really listening to what I’m saying. Whether that’s because there are too many eyes and I can’t meet all of them for a meaningful enough time to feel like I have that person’s attention, or there are too many eyes and I can’t meet all of them and so I feel that they don’t feel that they have my attention. I like a more personal connection with people even if it’s only for a short time, giving up that connection leaves me feeling adrift and purposeless; like everything I had done previously for the tour meant nothing and wasn’t heard by anyone.
I hope to feel that I have the ability to touch the spirit of all whom I come into contact with, brighten their world, and clear their eyes in order to see their world anew for the true breathtaking beauty it offers us with every passing moment.
What a great post to round out the semester! Honesty is a virtue that is often lost in the rush of today. When someone asks how you are, its almost like you’re expected to always say “Good, and you,” even when that could be farther from the truth. I had a really similar experience with the blogs. Sometimes I would look at the prompt and be discouraged. These activities were not just something I could complete with muscle memory to pump out 500 words. I actually had to sit down and think about what I wanted to say. In some cases, I’d come across a post where I got to share something that I really wanted to talk about but didn’t have an outlet. In these cases, it was a real fresh breath of air in a program where it's always scientific jargon. On the other hand, I do understand where you are coming from. Some weeks when it felt like nothing was going your way and it was harder to put together coherent posts.
I think the ability to connect with others is one of our greatest assets. Its not always easy though. There are so many factors that influence your ability to connect with an audience. Sometimes you can never know what level of knowledge your audience is going to come into a program with. As you mentioned, you tuned out of a program as you knew enough about the topic to have your own contrasting opinion. I find this is a common issue that comes with being an interpreter. I also agree with you that having a personal connection with people is more rewarding. I, too, feel that I am able to better convey a message to a smaller group. It can be easier to see the impact that you had on them, no matter have significant.
