SARAH WILSON GOES TO THE EDGE
SUBJECT Sarah Wilson
OCCUPATION Journalist, TV presenter and author
INTERVIEWER Berry Liberman
PHOTOGRAPHER Rob Palmer
LOCATION Sydney, Australia
DATE October, 2020
A few months ago, in the middle of particularly dark times on the Internet, a friend sent me Sarah Wilson’s article in The Guardian on what she terms, “Conspiritualism.” Her concise, fearless articulation of the conflation of the wellness world – love, light and rainbows – with alt-right conspiracy movements circulating online, distilled something which had baffled me for months. How had so many privileged people cherry-picked the things that “promote personal freedom and individuality, leaving out the responsibility, service and the sacrifice to the greater good”? The article felt… well, brave. In these days of platform-sanctioned, vicious personal attacks, who would wade into a public discourse on such tricky territory? It was impressive in its thoughtfulness and measured compassion. Sarah’s thesis concludes that because of deep loneliness and disconnection globally, trust is “at an all-time low.” In such a state, fostered by the spiralling whirl of scrolling and click bait, conspiracy theories are the very predictable and all-too-human response to profound overwhelm and uncertainty. Even trickier still, if the enemy is “Us,” it’s much better to hunt for monsters outside of your tribe. Old habits die hard.
Lucky for me, I got to chat to Sarah a month later. Our conversation was the inspirational juice I needed during a Melbourne lockdown malaise that seemed to have taken me by the throat and stifled the spirit out of me. Talk about overwhelm. However, from the minute the Zoom video came on, I didn’t have much time to dwell or feel sorry for myself. Sarah is ALL IN. Her new book, This One Wild and Precious Life, articulates “a hopeful path forward in a fractured world.” As someone very familiar with suffering, she says we have “cocooned ourselves in a state of overwhelm, in this suspended state of adolescence.” Distracted and numb, we are in collective moral and psychological retreat from dealing with the multiple crises we face. The remedy is to find our way back to the things we love: our selves, each other and the natural world. We have to reclaim connection as a matter of great urgency.
“What about rest?”, I ask, hoping she will prescribe lots of it for the weary warriors out there. Instead, she protests that “one of the best things we can do is accept that we need to pulse. Rest, full on-ness, rest, full on-ness. We don’t have to find the middle point.” At such a time as this, retreat is not the answer. Continuing to find ways of showing up, with potency and presence of mind, is the recipe for those willing to fight to save what we love.
BERRY LIBERMAN: I love the title of your book, This One Wild and Precious Life, which comes from my favourite Mary Oliver poem. “The Summer Day.” Given you are a fellow lover of poetry, shall I read it to us?
SARAH WILSON: Please.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean – the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down – who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to
