Notes on Becoming Rooted
A brief account of my low-grade existential crisis
My place-based person origin story is not a good one. Or rather, it didn’t come from a good place.
A few years ago I was quite unhappy but I had checked the boxes.
Good job.
Nice apartment.
Friends. Hobbies. Social life.
Check. Check. Check.
So I thought back to when I felt really really good. When I was a kid with a bad haircut and a razor scooter. My world was the six square blocks around Main and 15th. Papa’s Pizza, the community centre pool (RIP), 7-11, Gulzar’s house. My understanding of the world didn’t extend much beyond Mount Pleasant.
I wrestled with what the lesson was here. As appealing as buying an N64 and shutting my eyes to anything outside walking distance sounded, I didn’t think that was it.
So I did what anyone from 90s would do when faced with a problem: Went to the internet.
That’s where I found a piece by Spencer Scott called End the horror, let the crisis change you.
In it, he describes the low-grade shit sandwich of the polycrisis. That feeling of living at a time of big, bad, interconnected problems. Climate change, loneliness, inequality, greed, rising costs of living, mental health deterioration, state collapse, employment crisis, housing crisis, war, genocide, and unfortunately, many more.
If you’re lucky, this feels like the ambient drone of a fork scratching a plate. If you’re less lucky, it sounds like a hurricane or a gunshot.
Scott writes that one approach to the polycrisis is ignoring it. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t tried that. Maybe meditation and a half marathon was what I needed. The other option he offers is to “let the horror change you.” That sounded scary and not fun, but I wasn’t sure what else to try.
But how? How can I possibly address all these big, bad, interconnected problems?
To answer that, I read a lot of Substacks, became a regular at the Victoria Public Library, and spent more than a few therapy sessions on the topic of “existential dread.” What I found is best summed up by a bumper sticker: Think Globally, Act Locally.
If I had to explain it to a 5th grader: understand the big, bad, interconnected problems and then take actions in your personal life that help address them.
One book that stood out was Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer describes a problem that resonated with me as “not having both feet on the shore. One still in the boat.”
She writes about the sadness of not understanding or connecting with the world around us. I wonder how many of today’s issues could be softened by being more rooted. Loneliness for sure. But how would we think about homelessness if we knew the names of the people living on the streets? How would we treat the Garry Oaks if we knew our grandchildren depended on them? Would we even need Hinge if we knew all our neighbours?
Kimmerer tells the story of “White Man’s Footstep,” a plant settlers brought over. At first, it was met with suspicion. But once Indigenous people realized it was here to stay, they learned to understand it. Using it for tea, insect bites, digestion. Unlike other invasive species, it was useful, fit into small spaces, and coexisted with others. Botanists call such plants “naturalized,” meaning they aren’t native but have adapted to the ecosystem in a way that allows them to live in balance with what’s already there. Kimmerer extends this idea to people: to be naturalized is to put down roots in a place, to learn its patterns, to care for it, and to accept responsibility for the future that grows out of it.
And so began my quest to become a place-based person or “naturilized”. I quit my job at a multinational accounting and consulting firm and started working for an organization that supports local non-profits. I started to yap with my neighbours. Got a plot at a community garden with my friend Skylar. Became involved with a composting non-profit.
But here’s a caveat: my experience comes with a lot of luck. I’m good with numbers and kind of funny, but I’ve also had huge help along the way from parents, grandparents, and a system built for people who look like me. So this is not me recommending that you quit your job, stop shopping at Walmart, or buy an e-bike.
All I’m doing is sharing my personal experience as a far-from-perfect person in a world of big, bad, interconnected problems just trying to do what I can. Maybe this will find one person who feels the way I did. Maybe it’ll encourage someone to grow some tomatoes. Maybe it’ll give you the courage to chat with that person in your building’s elevator. Or maybe you’ll just hug your friends extra hard because you’re lucky to have them here.
If I have any ask, it’s this: plant your feet and see what happens.
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Bowen Arbutus Macy is one of the co-organizers of Public Assembly. He spends his days working at the Social Impact Fund called Thrive, and consuls with non-profits and social purpose enterprises. He also sits on the board of the Compost Education Centre and is a radio host at CFUV 101.9fm.
