To all those who don’t do enough, who drive 4X4s, who fly, who eat beef, who forget to recycle, who find that compost is complicated and who put overwrapped biscuits in the lunch boxes. To all those who are desperately looking for a place in daycare for their little one because they want to take care of themselves a little, too.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
To all the imperfect ones. I have an invitation for us.
On May 8, for Mother’s Day, I will be with my three children, with my mother, with my mother-in-law, my lover, my father and hundreds – hopefully thousands – of others, in the streets of Quebec.
We will not march against the CAQ, nor against its government, nor even against its lack of political courage. No, on May 8, we will not march against, but for. For the rest of the world.
We will walk for all of us, but for our children first. And for yours too.
Because the world’s greatest scientists tell us that there are three years left for politicians to make the decisions that would avoid driving us straight into the wall. Three years. It’s so little. But… we could still do it!
However, almost nothing moves. The elk stagnates, timid.
So, faced with our silence, faced with the announced disaster, our children no longer want to have children. Because mature forests are being ravaged by industry, taking away everything that lived on them, and that made us so proud. Our wilderness crumbles and we watch it die. Our children no longer want to have children because the scorching summers, because the floods, because the disappearance of the caribou, because the lakes that will be filled with mining waste, because the polluted rivers and our river – our si beautiful river – ransacked, because the damaged hearts that cause heart trouble on the rise, because the climate refugees and the wars that will follow. No, it’s not science fiction anymore. I can’t blame anyone for not wanting kids. I understand them, those who renounce all these wonders; to that of skin against skin, that of secrets exchanged, that of shared ideas and laughter, that of tears wiped away with fingertips, that of knitted and immortal complicity.
Our children give up dreaming of their future, abdicate to a host of emotions, to a real extension of themselves, to so many new countries…
And it’s our fault. Because we will not have had the necessary lucidity in time.
I’m not saying that you have to have children to be fully alive. I say that it is profoundly tragic to leave them neither the choice nor the time for desire. Desire is the only force that opposes death. The desire to believe, the desire to sow, the desire to hope, the desire for tomorrow.
In the eyes of my children, everything they love is threatened and they feel far too small to take care of it alone.
So for our children, renunciation becomes obvious. I find it so sad.
The responsibility for an ecological and social shift does not fall solely on individuals, and has nothing to do with the already overburdened shoulders of mothers.
It would be possible – it would be RESPONSIBLE – for the current government to scrutinize all its decisions for their impact on the environment and on social equity. As we already do for economic impacts. The tools exist. They are close at hand. It is the political will that is lacking.
So, to all the imperfect ones I am. On May 8, I give us an appointment in Quebec, where we will not march Against, but For.
For the rest of the world.
We will walk for all of us, but for our children first. And for yours too.
Will you come?