Water Stewardship - January Story

My initiation into water stewardship did not come from a happy place. I had not reached the point of burn-out, but I clearly understood the direction. This sense of 'something is off' was the primary catalyst of the book. Having (at least) an ideal of fearlessness, I launched upon a head-on investigation into the core reasons for my unhappiness. This investigating was the beginning of the personal path to water stewardship. A path that has been very important to me and that has brought me to a much more meaningful place - a place of care, agency and a sense of 'standing in full height'. But it started in a painful place. A place full of nameless sentiments and discomforts.

At a later point, I learned about the field of 'eco-psychology', which among other things describe the feelings of ecological grief as a mental health response. And today, thinking back, I can see that perhaps it was a kind of grief expressing itself as a mental response. But at the time feeling it, I could not name the feelings and only had vague ideas of the causes of my mental/emotional struggle. I did however understand that it was related to my work with water. I was extremely dedicated to my work and I worked a lot - but still the results of my work was not satisfying a deeper longing in me. A longing that had to do with my original choice to make water my primary focus in life.

Looking back at my work at that point, I felt I had let myself been dragged a long a trajectory beyond my steering. That my results did not sufficiently resonate with my original and still intact ideals for what I ought to do with my life. The sound of this lack of coherence had been with me for a while. But as the noise of it increased, I decided to approach and investigate the feeling. I did so in an attempt to understand what it meant. And hopefully to be able to take guidance from my insights.

I read various philosophical works, I searched for relevant articles and I watched related TED speeches. This deep dive gave me various insights that allowed me to follow a 'trail of breadcrums' closer and closer to the essence of what I was feeling. I thought to myself, that if I could be very precise in formulating my concerns, I would be closer to a solution. I would better know what steps to take.

An hard-to-bear insight came from Eve Enslers poem 'Suddenly, my body'. A poem that connected what was happening in the world with what was happening in her body as she went through the experience of having cancer. Her difficulties and the world's difficulties suddenly appeared not so different in her experience, both were felt directly and personally. She calls it that she could feel 'oil-drenched pelicans and dead floating fish' inside her body. This idea of not treating my discomfort as something outside me or as 'aseptic thoughts and concepts' but as something physically and felt inside me, was a kind of a break-through. Because now instead of searching outside in other people's ideas, I started searching inside.

This felt like a much more 'dangerous' avenue, but it made sense to the extent that I wondered why I had not understood this already on my own accord ... and much earlier. But it had not occurred to me before. The searching inside rather than outside entailed a more curious approach to the issue. Rather than spending my efforts to understand others and the precise state of 'the environment', I endeavoured to understand myself and my inner stories and reactions.

The search resulted in the identification of three key discomforts as the distilled main ingredients. Thinking and feeling these three discomforts once the same time almost perfectly resonate with the aches and grief I was feeling. It was as if, finally, I had been understood ... by myself.

The three discomforts - which I also describe in the book - were: desecration, apathy and banality.

Desecration

If something that is sacred is not treated as such a desecration takes place. Usually, we think of this in terms of descrating holy places such as e.g. a grave place. But there are also many things outside religion, that bears a sense of sacredness. I feel that it is possible to see water as a sacred thing in it self and as such not treating water with a level of respect can come across as a kind of desecration. Water plays a role in a variety of religious rituals and as such it seem reasonable to acknowledge that water has its own sacred role. For example in Chistianity water plays a significant role in every baptizing ritual, the holy river of Ganges has a central role in hinduism and wudhu is a ritual washing before prayer.

So from that point of view, it is possible to identify a number of situations in which we - even today - find water to have a sacred quality. But the following quote by Wendell Berry opened the concept of sacred water for a wider interpretation.

There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

Wendell Berry

Suddenly, one can imagine that it is not only some special amounts of water that is holy or sacred as per religion, but that water in it self and always has a sacred quality to it.

I realized that at some point, the sacredness of water must have been seen as an obvious truth, but that somewhere along the way, we lost the connection to that sentiment. The sentiment of respect towards water as the life giver.

When I look at my very professional/practical approach to water e.g. I add amounts up as a ressource in an Excel sheet to find ways to meet the water requirements of the city I work in, I show a utilitarian - almost respect less - approach to water. My standard approach does not involve sense of respect or reverence - and on reflection, that does not seem right. So, I experiment with different new approaches.

A first step out of this utilitarian approach is to use a different language and mindset. In stead of 'meeting requirements of the city where I work', I try in stead to 'find ways to satisfy the needs of the people and the area I serve'. This does not change that I add the numbers in Excel but it softens the touch of what I am doing, the words are kinder now, more considerate and a change of wording based in this kind of reflection has often opened for different ways of seeing, understanding and working with water.

Apathy

Apathy has a very specific original meaning, that is worth understanding. 'Apathy' comes from greek 'apathaia' and literally means 'without feeling' or 'without suffering'. When I learned this it was a mindblowing insight. It explains our apathy when it comes to our reaction pattern in regards to other pressing issues such as to climate change, to the conditions of our farm animals, to the refugee crisis, to the hunger crises etc. Our reaction is one of self-protection. We subconsciously refuse to let in the suffering and by doing so, we believe we can be protected.

In this understanding the 'grief flooding', I felt was in a sense a good sign. Not something that I ought to fight, not something to be internally rejected and not something to be shameful of. Repression of such feelings in me was automatic and almost subconscious. Upon reflection I could see that I feared that those emotions would prevent me from working 'normally'/'professionally' - so I repressed them. Untill I saw exactly that movement in me. Suddenly, I could physically sense the repressing movement in me - and I stopped doing it.

I had imagined that letting in the suffering would overwhelm me. But it didn't. I found a way where I was neither repressing it or being overwhelmed by it. The overwhelming feeling seemed more related to the repression work than to the sadness itself. And the sadness was a messenger of something important.

"The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate."

Rainer Marie Rilke

Banality

Finally, an understanding of banality in the context of evil was eye-opening. Elizabeth Minich who worked as a student of Hanna Arendt, who studied the lawsuit against 2nd world war criminal Erich Eichmann and there coined the concept of 'the banality of evil'. She claimed that there was nothing extra-ordinary about Eichmann - rather he was quite banal. She claimed that when the process of Nazism was first in motion, banal people were very useful in implementing and perpetuating it. This was at the time a profound understanding - as well as a controversial one. The troubling thing was, that if true, we might all be able to do Erich Eichmann stuff.

Minich however turns the truth a bit on the head by instead of talking about the 'banality of evil' talks about 'the evil of banality'. Which means that if we take a banal approach to life, if we don't investigate our basic assumptions we do evil out of our banality - our not knowing/reflecting/understanding. Minich distinguishes between intensive and extensive evil.

It is intensive evil for a pyromaniac to launch a forest fire, or for a criminal cast out of a village to sneak back and poison its wells. It is extensive evil when the pillars of society and a whole economic order accepts as mainstream that pollution of whatever sort and consequence is understood to be a mere bother that must not derail profits, economic growth, freedom from governmental interference. When careerism, greed, status-seeking are rewarded for work that is horrifically harmful to large numbers of people, even to a viable future for all, we have a classic case of extensive evil. It is not perpetrated by monsters; it is perpetrated by those who think no further than how to play and try to win in the present game, by the dominant rules.

Elizabeth Minnich 

This mindless approach to so many things in our life is what Minnich deems as 'extensive evil'. We often say or think: 'well that is the way of the world/sector/job'. But is it now really?

Upon inspection, I have found that these 'extensive evils' are everyday actions for all of us. But there are other ways - especially if we do not 'surrender' so easily.

A conclusion of fearlessness

This short article is without a doubt the least up-lifting message I have ever delivered publically. But even so, I encourage you to stay here just for awhile and then here at the end I will not leave you in this mood. There is of course a series of good reasons and benefits to investigating one's own shadow. When our shadow only moves 'in the shadows', it gives rise to fear. A path to fearlessness is bringing the shadown into the light (literally and figuratively). The mentioned shadows have not left my psyche, but they have been made known by it and therein lies a difference. They are not secret tormentors or 'fears and trembling' to which we are victims. Rather, we see that it is now possible to 'play chess' with the discomforts. To find ways of acknowledging the sacredness of water, to find ways staying with the grief of water pollution and to find ways to be less banal. All of this opens new avenues of a more investigative approach into our own inner moral stories - and therein lies legions of opportunities for better water stewardship

References

Suddenly, my body. Eve Ensler. https://www.ted.com/talks/eve_ensler_suddenly_my_body

Berry W. (2005). Given. Larkspur press.

Rilke R M (1929). Letters to a young poet. Insel Verlag

Ballow J. (2018). Minding Nature: Winter 2018, Volume 11, Number 1 https://www.humansandnature.org/banalitys-evil-an-interview-with-elizabeth-minnich

Background

I am the author of the book 'Water Stewardship". For 2021, I decided to make the insights from the book easier to access. For that purpose I have started narrating short Water Steward Stories. Rather than requiring the commitment of reading a full book, I want to share stories that can be read in a few minutes.

With a water stewardship approach we can contemplate important questions such as: How can we find ways to strengthen our relationship with water? How can we find ways to carry out stewarding actions towards the whole water body – which basically means the whole of nature and humanity?

I believe that if we find ways to become water stewards we will be better off in so many ways – physically, mentally and spiritually. And we will come to live on a earth that is thriving.

You can buy the ’Water Stewardship’ book at IWAP or Amazon or you can download it for free as open acces here: https://www.iwapublishing.com/books/9781789060324/water-stewardship.

I have an idea about connecting people who consider themselves to be water stewards – something like a kind of ”fellowship of water stewards”. I am not sure how to do this practically. But, if you are interested in joining this, please send a message to me via this email: ingildsen@livingwaterstewardship.com.

I also greatly appreciate comments and reflections to the article - feel free to write me or comment below.