How to be an Activist Without Feeling Afraid

I spent most of my university life campaigning for the climate. Back then, I hadn’t understood this:

‘Resistance is persistence.’

I felt fear when I thought of my future.

To me, it looked like no free time due to unending protests, or an untimely death from drowning in the rising sea levels. Morbid, isn’t it?

Not to mention the people I was surrounded by: apathetic citizens. It was easy to point and blame. Thinking I was part of the union, I was actually causing the divide.

I was caught in survival mode.

Then came Lockdown. The cancellation of all normal activities obliged me to wonder why.

What we activists ‘fight’ for is a resolution. We’re after the feeling of freedom. But even our vocabulary is fraught with resistance.

What if freedom is not something we can find, but something that we are?

When I was forced to stop resisting, the fear disappeared.

I was a key part of its persistence.

I found freedom in the adage

‘What you think about you bring about.’

The fear of the future becomes the present if it’s always on your mind.

I looked away from the data and the crowds calling for the politician’s deafened ears to listen. Instead, I looked at what was happening in my reality.

Rather than mourning the future I didn’t have, I revelled in the present I did. I sang and painted and danced — all I silently hoped my future would be. I lived it.

The people around me no longer appeared ignorant. They were in control of their current situation. I learned from who I used to blame.

Starting this dialogue was hard. It said: I am to blame for the fear I experience.

Equally, it told me I am in control of the feeling I experience. This acceptance is a reframe. With it, I began to feel free.

Take a look at this graph from Dr. Joe Dispenza’s book ‘Becoming Supernatural’

I see through this lens that I can feel the freedom I thought did not belong to me; that the ownership of the feeling-spectrum is open, and wide, for each of us. It takes me out of the powerless seat and places me in the throne of power — which is what I was always after. The power to choose.

Too often, I’ve been in pursuit of a feeling on the entirely wrong track. When I understand that freedom is not something I will find, but something that I am, I see that every action is the pursuit of a feeling.

So instead of going after freedom, I create it. I do the thing that makes me feel most alive. I fall in love with the process.

When I saw I had direct influence only on myself and the people around me, I began to ask better questions.

‘What can I do that will raise the feelings in and around me?’

The future is nothing but a continuation of the present moment. By feeling the energies of freedom and gratitude and joy, I rid myself of the self-imposed constraints, and everyone around me is influenced in a positive way. I create a future worth living for.

This is the ripple effect that benefits the Earth.