The leaves are starting to change early here. I’m told it’s a result of the long hot and dry summer we had. It’s still sunny and unseasonably warm, so it feels strange having this juxtaposed against what I always associate with the changing seasons and inexorable descent into winter (my most dreaded time of year).
Weather being a favourite conversation topic of Canadians, I’ve chatted about this with friends and colleagues. The incredibly humid summer we had. But also how late it started. That when we were younger Toronto had four distinct seasons, and now winter seems to drag into May, and then it’s summer overnight and we don’t really have spring or autumn anymore. The noticeable impacts of climate change.
I saw a strange movie at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) on the weekend that sort of touched on this subject. Called Peak Everything in English and Amour Apocalypse in the original French, it was ostensibly about love and calamity against the backdrop of manmade weather disasters.
I’m still not sure how I felt about the movie. I was never clear what parts were supposed to be fantastical and what we were supposed to believe as real. Before it began the director told us it was a romantic comedy, so to please enjoy the love story but also that she wanted us to feel incredibly anxious when we left.
Does anyone need to be told to feel incredibly anxious in the year 2025? Isn’t that just a given now? I like to think of myself as somewhat of an early adopter in that regard, not having a time in my life where I didn’t experience nagging worry about something, anything.
My anxiety; I guess like all anxiety, stems from a need to feel in control over things I can’t. But more specifically, I feel this deep need to ‘account’ for people. To ensure that everyone around me is safe, even though this is impossible. I like to think I manage it in such ways that it doesn’t spill over too much onto others. But I know I’m not always particularly successful, especially with those who I’m closest to. And then I feel incredibly guilty for foisting this broken part of my brain onto someone who loves me. Which only intensifies everything.
In Peak Everything the protagonist Adam experiences intense climate anxiety, deepening a lifelong struggle with depression. A character who back in the day we might have romanticized as being prone to melancholy. The film makes it clear that Adam’s mental health is disruptive to his life, but suggests that finding love might be a fix. It’s a nice thought, although perhaps the most fantastical part of the movie.
A lifelong worrier, I know no amount of love in the world can change it. That has to come from within. Something that’s worked well for me is not giving into despair. Whether it’s something I’ve cultivated, or genetic luck or some combination of the two, I’ve always been able to find genuine joy in really small things.
I can be in a sour mood and see a dog out on a walk and immediately feel better. Drinking an iced coffee sitting on a park bench (as long as the wasps aren’t out in full force) brings me so much peace. I love bubble baths. I have one almost every day.
A colleague once told me that another colleague confided in her that she didn’t like me because “I was too earnest”. She didn’t believe it was genuine. Other than being unclear why someone I considered a friend felt the need to share this very pointed piece of office gossip with me, I wasn’t offended. Why would I be upset that someone who believes cynicism is preferable to optimism thinks I suck? She thinks everything does.
But trust me, I do understand the seductiveness of doomerism. How out of our control everything feels at this moment. How we constantly have forces trying to pit us against each other. How the leaves changing this early in September can feel like a harbinger.
How like Adam in Peak Everything, we’re all at the brink of being so overwhelmed it’s easier to concede that change isn’t possible.
But then my anxiety, that part of my brain that needs to be in control tells me what I can do instead. And rather than try to dampen it, I lean into it. I harness what I do have agency over and use it turn potential despair into something more useful.I’m not naive. I know that meticulously separating out my recyclables and organics from my garbage isn’t going to singlehandedly stave off climate change. That taking flights claiming carbon offsets are better than not flying at all.
I also know I come from a place of incredible privilege, I’m employed, I have a roof over my head and food in my fridge. My rights aren’t under attack and that makes it infinitely easier to live freely. And makes it easier to be kind too.
But I also know embracing doomerism doesn’t hurt the people who are harming you, it doesn’t make the leaves change later in the season or the summer less hot, it just hurts you and robs you of finding your small joys. And you deserve those joys. All of them. Don’t let the things you can’t control deny you the pleasures of life you can.
Maybe that was the message of Peak Everything and I understood it after all.