I used to love to tell the story about the window of opportunity. When I was young and devoted to activism, I told it to anyone who would listen.
You know how it goes. Even though we’re in mortal danger, we still have a chance to save ourselves—but only if we take action right now, no more talking, no more delays—because the window is closing and it’s closing fast. How much time have we got? That depends. Some say ten years, some twenty, some go as high as a hundred. Still, in the long journey of human history a decade or two or even a century is only the blink of an eye, and our fate is in that blink.
If I had crossed your path back in those days, I would have barraged you with details about the threats we’re facing, laying them on thick, then even thicker, watching you carefully until I saw your eyes fill up with fear. Then I’d pivot and announce that for yet a little while hope was still ours for the taking.
I provoked distress because I wanted to move people to action. And it’s true that fear can fire people up, but it’s also true that fear, when there’s too much of it, shuts people down even more than it fires them up. A net loss. So it didn’t matter how sincere I was, I wasn’t helping. And maybe it’s just that I wanted you to be as scared as I was so I’d have company.
Now, though, when I hear someone tell the Window Story, I hear it as an admission of defeat, a story of despair, because the time frame is too short for us to pull off something as momentous as the salvation of our species. We’d have to make an impossible leap overnight. Tomorrow morning billions of us would have to get up and go show up out on the playing field of survival, giving it everything we’ve got, all of us in synch, one harmonious global team.
But that kind of togetherness is not possible for us. By our nature, we humans are too contentious and contrary. Which means this cherished window of ours is only a pretty picture painted on the wall we’re about to hit.