I come from a taker culture. I’m doing my best to unlearn and be a leaver. It starts (to me) with the recognition that the way I have been living is a way uncooperative with nature, and incompatible with sustainability. I’ve been growing more spiritual, not to pacify myself but to take time to give thanks to the world for what it has given me. I drive less than I used to, opting to cycle or walk most of the time.

I think it’s safe to say I’m still a taker (I mean hell I live on stolen Diné land), but I’m doing my best to learn to not be. As soon as I can, I plan to leave this place, it can’t sustain a population like this and I can’t in good conscience contribute to it’s destruction.

If ape fling poo in city, ape get arrested too. To free one’s mind from the shackles of society, does not free them from the consequence of interacting with it.

Makes me think of how I recently read Ishmael and it literally changed my life. I understand now. I am ape. Do as ape do.

There’s like, a lot more than that, but that was my biggest takeaway (which would probably make the author very sad given what the book was actually about)