Tom Ellis
May 30, 2022

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The only way I’ve found of adapting to living in a dying, poisoned, sociopathic nation I once loved is simply to focus on what I CAN control: my breath, my thoughts, my moods, but more broadly, my garden and my neighborhood. As an old bit of Chinese wisdom once observed, the best way to overcome pervasive evil is no necessarily to fight it directly, since hatred is a form of subjective involvement with the hated object—but rather, to make energetic progress in the good, no matter what happens in the larger world beyond our control. America is dying; long live Gaia—the community of all living things on our planet. So I no longer consider myself an “American,” but rather, a Gaian. But so are you, and so is everyone else. “Gaian” is the only identity label I know that excludes nobody at all.

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Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis

Written by Tom Ellis

I am a retired English professor now living in Oregon, and a life-long environmental activist, Buddhist, and holistic philosopher.

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