This is an address to a generation of travellers, one restless to “find themselves.” I pose a quiet challenge: how can you truly find yourself, if not through the goodness of your thoughts and actions manifested in the world around you? How can self-discovery be authentic if it leaves no room for reverence and if it fails to uphold the sanctity of the very world that allows you to seek? The world you are searching in is the world you are also shaping. It is not enough to ask where you are going, ask also what you are leaving behind. What good is it to know who you are, if you have forsaken the goodness of the world you must live in?
“The answer to the problems of humanity is the integrity of the individual.” – Jordan B. Peterson.
There is great truth in this assertion, especially when applied to the crisis that looms over every horizon we chase: the climate crisis. When we speak of sustainability, we often speak of institutions, governments, corporations, and policies. We forget that the world is composed not of abstractions, but of individuals, each with agency, each with responsibility.
If the integrity of the individual is the answer, then each traveller bears a portion of that answer within themselves. The solution to the environmental crisis begins not with grand gestures, but with personal orientation of one’s self, one’s actions, and one’s values towards the good.
Want nothing but good and watch that manifest itself in the people and the world around you. If your habits while abroad contradict the world you wish to live in, then travel is no longer a journey of discovery, but of dissonance.
One must align oneself with the highest vision of sustainable living one can conceive of. What of our limitations? What of the student with no influence, or the traveller on a budget? Then adjust the scale, not the vision. Scale your sustainability goal to something achievable. You adjust the threshold of your responsibility to match your present capacity, while still aiming for the highest impact. You choose the slower route, offset your flights, change modes of transport, reduce your waste and question your choices. And do this consistently, with care, until your capacity for change grows and your influence stretches further than before.
As you move into the world of business, adjust your scale upwards towards the ultimate good for the environment. I know that this individual integrity must scale as I join businesses that can perpetuate harm or lead transformation. I intend to steer my environment toward the latter. I will use that position to embed sustainability into the foundations of the organisations I work with, pushing for measurable, lasting, environmental change.
To my fellow young travellers: the world you are discovering is also the one you are writing into being. Let your choices shape it. For no individual is too small to make a difference, unless they choose to be.
