Remembrance

Remembrance Day, as we call it in Canada, is intended mainly for honoring the veterans of what we call the “World Wars.” To observe it properly, we ought to see those wars in their context – which is also the context of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) now winding up (or down) in Glasgow. To give us a glimpse of it, George Monbiot “crudely summarized” the story of the past 500 years in his blog post yesterday. That history has brought us to the ecological, economic, energy and equity crises we face today, and living through them will be a far greater challenge than living through those wars, devastating as they were. We have less than a decade to turn that story around.

There’s another kind of remembrance that we ought to engage in every day. In Turning Signs i call it mindfulness.

We who live in the “wealthy nations” don’t have all the time in the world to mend our unjust and ruinous ways. But we have all the world in the time, if we live it mindfully.

In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time being, they are your time being.

— Dogen, “Uji