I was watching a wonderful TED talk featuring Dr Glenn Albrect today and it reminded me of an experience I have had with my six year old. Glenn talks about “solstalgia” to describe the sense of homesickness you have when you are still at home . A person who has witnessed a great change in their home environment might feel solstalgia. Keep this in mind while I give you a little background to my family and before I tell you all about the crying in the car park…
When children rank “the environment” as their first worry alongside their “friends and family dying”, I feel justified in shielding my children from too much exposure to the big problems of the environment. I try instead to help them love nature, trying to emulate the childhoods of the great environmental advocates. The defining characteristics of the childhoods of these great people, such as David Suzuki, seems to be an early childhood exploring nature accompanied by an adult and later by themselves. So instead of teaching my children about the destruction of coral reefs, I put my effort into giving them opportunities to find wonder in our natural world. Keep in mind my interests keep me firmly on the green side of the fence so alot of adult-speak must filter through.
Here’s the crying part:
We drove in the carpark of our nearest supermarket and my six year old burst into tears saying “Mum, there is no room for the animals and the trees. It’s not fair”. She was so stricken with grief. Absolute sadness filled her every bone. I found a park and she crawled over the front and sat on my lap for at least ten minutes crying her poor little eyes out. I found myself saying things like, “we need the supermarket”, “if we didn’t have a car we couldn’t visit X”. I did not have the words to help her and the words I was saying felt like lies.
I still don’t have the words to help her but I feel Glenn Albrecht’s term soltalgia opens up new ways of expressing the emotions we feel over the changes in our environment. I know some of the natural history of my hometown and sometimes I stand and imagine what it looked like before it was developed. I guess this is what my child is doing too. But is it possible to feel homesick for an environment you have only heard of and read about but never seen?
Check out his blog to get a better sense of solstalgia
Sound Earth Blog 
