Letting Go of Everything We Expected

Hey folks—

If you feel, right now, like you are waking up to a magnitude of upheaval you didn’t expect — if you feel really unsure about what it means and what you should do to manage the resulting chaos in your own life — you are not alone.

Working through this sudden collision with planetary reality is work we will all be forced to take up in the next few years.

In this podcast, I unpack discontinuity, and the ways in which it demands new thinking. That need for new thinking can leave us with feelings of personal discontinuity and alienation from our surroundings... and of a sense of disconnection from the futures we once imagined for ourselves and our children.

This presents an opportunity, though. Discontinuity is not devastation; disaster springs from our unwillingness to acknowledge it. We can reimagine the lives we’re building to thrive in discontinuity — just as we can rebuild our communities to increase their durability and capacity for change. The loss of continuity is not the end of the story, it’s the beginning.

In a strange way, letting go of the world we expected to have can give us back a future we want.

Alex

PS: My next crash course in personal ruggedization will begin at the end of the month. Details in my next newsletter.

- This new podcast, When We Are, is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and other podcast platforms around the world, should that be your preferred way of listening. Please subscribe, rate and review.

- My work was mentioned in two news stories last week, one in The Atlantic about the breakdown of sense-making in social media and one in The Guardian about the California fires. Also, though this piece didn’t reference my work, regular readers will notice a lot of my regular themes: That Giant Sucking Sound? It’s Climate Change Devouring Your Home’s Value. Finally, a reader asked where they might find this interview I did back in 2022: How to ruggedize your life and prepare for... whatever comes next.

- I have a recent piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It.

- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky

- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero

- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.

- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married" and My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series. I also spoke recently with PBS News Hour about why there are no climate havens.