DownStream
Whether we choose to acknowledge it, each of us lives downstream of somebody and each of us lives upstream of somebody. We may not be able to see who all are affecting us from their perches upstream and we may not be able to see who all we are affecting downstream of us, but affecting one another we are. The beloved Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh called this interconnectedness “interbeing.”
The phrase in the namesake piece of this collection, “Everybody lives downstream” is from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass.* To provide a bit of context, in this portion of the book she is talking about the lengths she went to in the restoration of the small pond on her land and why it mattered that she did so without resorting to a quick fix through chemicals, noting that “the water connects us all.” I further channeled this idea that water connects us all into a series of stylized water drops portraying some of the most environmentally impactful things we are collectively doing to the water we share. Other pieces in this collection speak to the importance of speaking up, to the idea that losing anyone to violence is unacceptable, and to the notion that keeping gratitude front and center is a powerful antidote* to what ails us.
*The phrases “Everybody Lives Downstream” and “Gratitude is a powerful antidote” from Braiding Sweetgrass are used with permission from Milkweed Editions.
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