Amor mundi – or how to carry Gaia’s scream in your chest

There are days when the heaviness of knowing is almost too much. Not because the facts are unclear, but because they are. The data is in. The trends are unmistakable. Species lost. Temperatures rising. Time running out. And yet, the dishwasher needs unloading.

This is the double awareness I live with. Maybe you do too. A planetary grief, carried alongside the intimate rhythms of daily life. The clatter of cutlery next to the knowledge of collapsing ecosystems. A laugh shared with my daughter on the same day I read another IPCC report. I don’t think it makes me hypocritical. I hope not. Maybe it makes me human.

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt used the term amor mundi — love of the world. Not because the world deserves it. But because love is the only meaningful response to despair. And that is the strange, beautiful tension I try to hold: between clarity and care. Between knowing, and still showing up.

Not to fix it all. But to bear witness. To remain porous. To let myself be touched by both the absurdity and the tenderness of being alive in this particular century. I do not have a grand mission. Not anymore. The need to “do something big” has been levelled by realism. No one is waiting for me. Only those close to me, now and then.

So I do the small things. I prepare a meal. I write these lines. I water the garden. I keep showing up for those I love. And I allow myself the laughter, the silliness, the fleeting joy — not as escape, but as resistance. The absurd is not solved. It is survived. To name this duality is not to seek resolution. It is to refuse amnesia.

Yes, I carry Gaia’s scream in my chest. And yes, I smile at the way my dog tumbles over her own paws. This is not contradiction. It is coherence. In a time when the default is numbness or distraction, attention is an act of care. And care is a form of quiet rebellion.

I don’t write this to inspire. But merely to say: if you, too, feel this double pull — sorrow and silliness, despair and devotion — you are not alone. What we do with this awareness will differ. But to hold it at all, without turning away, is already a kind of work. A kind of love. Not the romantic kind. Not even the activist kind. But something older: amor mundi. Love of the world. A stubborn love that persists even when the world seems to unravel. Perhaps, especially then.