WILD HEARTS: Rewilding rejects the we’re-so-special exceptionalism
Rewilding our hearts is a dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our hearts and minds, our caring and awareness. Reawakening these long-dormant parts of ourselves can lead to an emotional affinity for and reconnection to nature. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, can help us make wiser choices and pursue heartfelt actions that improve the lives of all beings.
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: It’s common knowledge that we are losing species and habitats at an unprecedented rate in a geological epoch known as the Anthropocene — the age of humanity. It’s essential to rewild the world before it’s too late… Yet, on we press, in a seemingly never-ending quest to extricate ourselves from the wild, animated by the misguided belief that we must dominate or be dominated. And this quest—this so-called age of humanity—is anything but humane. It’s extremely violent and would be better termed the rage of inhumanity…
In Rewilding Our Hearts, I asked people to become re-enchanted with the natural world, to act from the inside out, and to allow their hearts to guide them in dissolving false boundaries so they could truly connect with both nature and themselves. By personally rewilding, undoing the unwilding brought about by our obsessive need to dominate, and reconnecting, people will become re-enchanted with nature, overcome negativity, and see the world in more positive ways.
Personal rewilding means rehabilitating our hearts and tapping into our biophilic inclinations. Reawakening these long-dormant parts of ourselves can lead to an emotional affinity for and reconnection to nature.
Rewilding our hearts is a dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our hearts and minds, our caring and awareness. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, can help us make wiser choices and pursue heartfelt actions that improve the lives of all beings.
Rewilding demands humility in how we interact with other animals and the places they call home. We need to be humble in the face of what the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth century referred to as nature’s sublimity—its awesomeness. We should treat nature as we would a dear friend whose welfare matters for its own sake and even more so because it matters for our sake, too…
Rewilding means appreciating, respecting, and accepting other beings and landscapes for who or what they are, not for who or what we want them to be. It means rejoicing in the personal connections we establish and so desperately need. It’s the inarguable realization that if we are going to make the world a better place now and for future generations, personal rewilding is the way to get there. MARC BEKOFF
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