“Rewilding is largely a matter of humans getting out of the way and letting nature take charge.”—Graham Lawton“
It’s common knowledge that we are losing species and habitats at an unprecedented rate in a geological epoch known as the Anthropocene—the age of humanity. It’s essential to rewild the world before it’s too late. What does this mean: Before it’s too late? Generally speaking, as a species, humans don’t do well with points of no return. Our active brains allow us to convince ourselves that even if things don’t work out today, we always have tomorrow. What happens when the promise of tomorrow is undone by today’s inaction? Is our intelligence a gift or a burden?
Removing ourselves from this tapestry is less an emancipation from nature and more a manipulation of variables—a complex puzzle—too numerous and too complex for us to successfully take apart and put back together. I call this the Humpty-Dumpty phenomenon. Nature is the greatest architect, and to pretend otherwise is hubris, pure and simple. Rather than view the natural world as a problem to be solved, we should view it as the lifeboat keeping us afloat.
Yet, on we press, in a seemingly never-ending quest to extricate ourselves from the wild, animated by the misguided belief that we must dominate or be dominated. And this quest—this so-called age of humanity—is anything but humane. It’s extremely violent and would be better termed the rage of inhumanity.
Indeed, as wild animals enter urban areas—places that were once their homes—there is more to celebrate than fear. With hope, these individuals will help people bridge the empathy gap and learn to apply the same caring and compassion they feel for their companion animals (aka pets) to their new wild neighbors (aka wildlife), who are as rightfully deserving of being here as any of us. The growing interdisciplinary and international field of compassionate conservation mandates that all individuals are stakeholders, and is based on the principles of:
First, do no harm
All individuals matter
We must strive for peaceful coexistence among all of Earth’s residents.2
A rewilding mindset of empathy, feelings, thoughts, and compassionate action
In Rewilding Our Hearts, I asked people to become re-enchanted with the natural world, to act from the inside out, and to allow their hearts to guide them in dissolving false boundaries so they could truly connect with both nature and themselves. By personally rewilding, undoing the unwilding brought about by our obsessive need to dominate, and reconnecting, people will become re-enchanted with nature, overcome negativity, and see the world in more positive ways.
Personal rewilding means rehabilitating our hearts and tapping into our biophilic instincts. Reawakening these long-dormant parts of ourselves can lead to an emotional affinity for and reconnection to nature.
Rewilding our hearts is a dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our hearts and minds, our caring and awareness. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, can help us make wiser choices and pursue heartfelt actions that improve the lives of all beings.
Rewilding demands humility in how we interact with other animals and the places they call home. We need to be humble in the face of what the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth century referred to as nature’s sublimity—its awesomeness. We should treat nature as we would a dear friend whose welfare matters for its own sake and even more so because it matters for our sake, too.
Personal rewilding is also about nurturing joy, awe, and wonder and tapping into our biophilic tendencies. It’s about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. It’s also a guide for action, using our hearts (feelings), heads (thoughts), and hands and bodies to do something greater than ourselves. As a social movement, it tells us to be proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful, passionate, playful, present, principled, proud, and polite, what I call the 13 Ps of rewilding.
Rewilding is a mindset. It reflects the desire to (re)connect intimately with all animals and landscapes in ways that dissolve borders. Rewilding means appreciating, respecting, and accepting other beings and landscapes for who or what they are, not for who or what we want them to be. It means rejoicing in the personal connections we establish and so desperately need. It’s the inarguable realization that if we are going to make the world a better place now and for future generations, personal rewilding is the way to get there.
If we allow it to be so, these shared feelings can serve as a “social super glue” that will keep us together, move us forward, and allow us to increase our compassion footprint. This broader view of rewilding brings us all together.