In the wake of ongoing global upheaval, actor and activist Nathalie Kelley asks if now can be the time that humanity unites as one.&nbsp;&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s been quite the season - the <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/ibiza/nathalie-kelley-s-climate-column-june-23" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon rainforest</a> has likely reached the dreaded tipping point, floods and fires rage around the world, we saw huge wins for Indigenous people in the last month (Lula&rsquo;s partial veto of Marco Temporal) as well as huge losses (Australia&rsquo;s No vote on a referendum about Indigenous inclusion in the constitution).&nbsp; And while living the age of the Anthropocene has taught us the need to hold multiple crises and truths at once - to plough forward with the news as if our lives had not been irreversibly changed on October 7th would be doing a grave injustice to the collective grief that we are all feeling, and the opportunity hidden in this tragic crisis.
What I won't do today (or any day) is pick a side or put anyone&rsquo;s grief above another&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I understand this might be infuriating - as someone whose internal fire rages against any and all injustices, I can acknowledge that anger and in the same breath, I must reaffirm my commitment to Ahimsa and the principles of Non-Violence.
If I subscribed to one religion it would be this: To cultivate the absence of the desire to kill or harm, as declared by Mahatma Gandhi: &lsquo;According to the Jain tradition, Ahimsa is a great vow of compassion in body, mind and spirit.&nbsp; Their scriptures state: Don&rsquo;t injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.&nbsp; The Jains believe that life is sacred regardless of faith, caste, race, or even species.&nbsp; Harm done to other beings is considered harm to oneself since it attracts much karma&hellip; Violence alone is the gateway to the miserable state, it is also the ocean of sin; it is itself a terrible hell and surely the densest darkness.&rsquo;
A person doesn&rsquo;t need a degree in <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/soul-spirituality/why-do-we-love-to-travel-the-psychology-of-travel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">psychology</a> to see that behind the violence currently being unleashed are unhealed patterns of trauma, passed on from one historically oppressed people to another. As author and civil rights leader Valarie Kaur writes in her phenomenal book See No Stranger, &lsquo;unresolved grief inside a person is tragic; unresolved grief inside a nation is catastrophic.&rsquo;

Photo By Waren Brasse

For millennia, the natural response to pain and <a href="https://www.lofficielibiza.com/soul-spirituality/how-emotional-trauma-could-be-impacting-your-health" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trauma</a> has been one of defensiveness and retaliation.&nbsp; Those calling for mob violence often drown out the desires of the majority&rsquo;s will for peace.&nbsp;Must we wait for a once in a lifetime figure like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela to break through the &lsquo;eye-for-an-eye&rsquo; mentality? Because it is precisely those voices, bravely calling for peace, that we must amplify right now, unless we want our children to inherit another hundred years of pain, fear and bloodshed. Will we allow the unspeakable tragedies of the last two weeks to become catalysts for us to move beyond &lsquo;identity politics&rsquo; towards a vision of a future of shared peace and prosperity among all beings? Can we be radical and brave enough to work through our unconscious and conscious biases and demand a peaceful, just and equitable world for all living beings?&nbsp;&nbsp;
When will we understand that the looming threat of human-caused climate change is the common threat to our existence?&nbsp; One that will require us to drop grievances, abandon tribalism and come together to ensure that our children inherit a liveable future. And not just a future without bombs, but one that also concludes access to clean water and healthy soil. When will we return to our understanding of interdependence of all living beings?&nbsp;That one person&rsquo;s happiness or well-being is not guaranteed until their neighbours happiness and well-being is also provided for?
As Lilla Watson says: &lsquo;If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.&rsquo;
This is the direction we must move in if there is any hope for humanity.&nbsp; The war machine must be dismantled and that money must be invested into tried-and-true nature-based solutions such as agroforestry, rewilding, reviving local and diversified small-scale farms and innovations in water capture. The to-do list before we reach the point of no return is endless.&nbsp; Melting down our guns into shovels would be the most profound symbolic and practical step towards reclaiming our collective sanity. But to do these things, first our grief must be respected.&nbsp; Our righteous indignation at the loss of life must move beyond our tribal loyalties and allegiances to include injustices against all living beings.&nbsp;&nbsp;

I will leave you with these quotes&nbsp; by Joanna Macy from <a href="https://www.activehope.info/">Active Hope</a>:
Could the next leap in evolution arise out of a shift in identification, in which we shed the story of battling for supremacy and move instead into playing our role as part of a larger team of life on Earth?
&nbsp;Could the creativity and survival instinct of humanity as a whole, or even of life as a whole, act through us?
&nbsp;Here connected consciousness stems from a widening of our self-interest, where we are guided by the intention to act for the well-being of all life.
We stand at an evolutionary crossroads, and we collectively, could turn either way. Our own choices are part of that turning.

Nathalie Kelley: ‘We stand at an evolutionary crossroads.’

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