With every crisis comes opportunity.  Essential truths like this one are easy to forget when one feels like a leaf turning at the mercy of the winds.  When the world of abstraction and the conventional narrative of progress dissolve in the cold hard acid rains of reality, when we run up against the all too physical constraints on growth, both personal and as a society, it behooves us to remember that such moments are not dead ends, but forks in the road.  I am reminded of an expression that is also often tossed about lightly in the winds, without much consideration necessarily given to the meaning of the phrase: “the world is your oyster.”

What could illustrate this pearl of wisdom more perfectly than the plumes of oil, the physical embodiment of mammon itself, slathering the oyster beds of the Gulf Coast today?  This event has forced big changes on both the villains of corporate greed responsible for the pollution and on those who have long made a life based upon those oyster beds, whether through fishing, tourism, or any of the other activities that have come to define human life in these parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.  By now most of us have heard the stories and seen the iconic images of fishing folk asking themselves: “This is what I have always done.  What now?”  What may be getting lost here, though, is just how remarkable it is that we humans are able to ask such a question at all.  Perhaps that more than anything else is what separates us from the oysters: our versatility, creativity, and networks of support in the face of crises personal, environmental, and political.  These times may not be easy, they may not be Cake, but you know what?  Like Gloria Gaynor, we WILL survive.

Besides, where is the fun in having it easy?

Peak oil is another crisis that illustrates this point, connected as it is (everything in the world is connected) to the destruction of the oyster beds I mentioned above.  Many observers of the phenomenon feel they are privy to some kind of unique and special knowledge, and that their first duty is to alert the rest of humanity to the impending (or ongoing) crisis.  But what has become increasingly apparent to me over time, particularly in recent days, is how many people already see that something is amiss, and just how few subscribers there really are to the myth dispensed by schools and politicos of infinite growth in a finite world.  People, more and more every day, can see what is happening around them and the connections between political events and the day-to-day concerns of their lives, whether or not they may be able to draw an explicit cause-and-effect relationship.  No longer is it possible to deny the personal stake each of us has in the political issues of our times.

The answer is blowing in the wind – and crashing in the waves. And the times, they ARE a-changing.  What remains to be seen is whether we, or really, enough of us to make a difference and change course, are able to catch these waves, to set our sails in the new winds.  Today is a new day.  So seize the carp, as they say, and make it yours.    The world really is your oyster, but this point matters only if you are prepared to open it and find the pearl, not to mention the meat, inside of it.  Just as an appropriate response when life hands you lemons is to make lemonade (or even plant more lemons – who says they aren’t useful?), when life hands you meat, it makes little sense to refuse to eat it on grounds that you are a vegetarian.

When you come to a fork in the road, and you have no choice but to take it, will you use it to feed yourself, or to stab your fellow (wo)man in the back?