Why I'm going to Uni at 50
and how you can join me
The short story:
After the recent shock of my brother’s death, and after more than a year of looking worldwide for a job that aligns with my values, and at which I can make a significant impact, I applied for a Master of Environmental Management at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. I reckon my brother and other relatives and friends who have made their transitions are nudging me from The Great Beyond.
I am delighted to share I’ve been accepted! I begin the 2-year program on 24 July 2023.
I’m campaigning for financial support to cover tuition, board, and a vehicle to get around in. While I could take 10 years to complete this degree and fund it myself by working and studying part-time, I feel the urgency of a polluted world on fire. I would like to be of the greatest service, and as soon as possible. So I am asking you to support me, to support all of us.
I would love to have you travel alongside and learn with me by reading or listening to what I share here on Substack at no cost other than your time and attention. If you have the means, you can subscribe for $6/month, $60/year, or a $108 Founding Subscription. Additionally, I certainly welcome larger donations to this GoFundMe campaign. I am enormously grateful for you and your support, whatever form it takes.
Before the longer naked story, here's a short clothed video!
The longer story:
The naked truth is that I love learning. My mother never fails to amaze me with stories I have never heard before. Recently she recounted my very first day of school as a 5 year old. I was so excited to begin my studies that when I learned the first day of school had finally arrived, I immediately ran out of the house toward school. She had to chase after me and bring me back.
I was stark naked!
I was slow to speak as a child, but my mother knew it was not out of a mental deficiency, although chronic ear infections did lead to hearing loss and APD - auditory processing disorder, which certainly affected how I got along in the world. She could see I was considering everything, taking it all in on a wider scale before speaking. When I did start talking at about age 2, I did it in full sentences. Even though I went from zero to one-hundred in no time, two of my top-rated words were the shortest - “Yes!” and “Why?”
She got so tired of my incessant curiosity, she started entertaining herself by making things up each time I asked, “Why?” Until it backfired on her. At the laundromat I asked her what she was doing and instead of saying, “washing clothes,” she said, “baking pies”. I toured the laundromat and made a few friends, introducing myself as the name my mother always called me — Pumpkin. I was disappointed to find they were not baking pies. As we left my mom was surprised to hear them call me Pumpkin. My given name is Melissa Elvira, which means ‘Honeybee counseled by Elves’.
My main aim is to build bridges. In various ways and forms I’ve been building bridges my whole life. To build a bridge I need to know the terrain on both shores.
In recent years I have been stymied by the “facts” and the surity that others seem to possess, while suspecting few individuals can adequately see the full picture. Thus my interest in futurism.
Seeing ourselves into the future will require all our eyes.
Honeybees have 5 eyes — 3 ocelli, or simple eyes that detect light (but not shape) on the top of the head, and the 2 larger ones most of us think of as their eyes. These two main composite eyes each have 6,900 (worker bees) or 8,600 (drone bees) hexagonal facets, which are essentially micro-eyes and are called ommatidium. Not only is their vision more like a mosaic than ours, like birds, they are also tetrachromats. They see ultraviolet colour we cannot (although some human women can).
Because honeybees are communal creatures, they are a good example of how to carry individual perceptions back to the hive and communicate them to the collective. They do this through a waggle dance — I was so taken with this means of communication, I incorporated waggle dancing into my stand-up comedy!
My point is — it takes all of us, with all of our varied ways of seeing, to see the way forward for all our relations.
Teasing out what is true from what is propaganda has become tedious and seemingly impossible. I don’t know who or what to believe. I do know there are ways and means that feel more right; they feel better to my body and heartmind. And this embodied consciousness I am so schooled in is one end of one bridge.
The years I have lived in the world of wellness (my whole life so far actually) have encoded within my being and my living certain truths that I know in my cells. I know intimately the medicines of meditation, movement, breathing, functional nutrition, altered states of consciousness, community, relational worldviews, and the power of prayer and praise.
Recent advances have empowered science to align with these wisdom traditions, thereby affirming age-old practices of yogis, monks, ascetics, and indigenous peoples. Practitioners who’ve long been pooh-poohed — as well as others who’ve been skeptical or fearful — now have reassuring proof.
When a friend recently went off on a rant about how tired he is of the alarmist climate change focus and how it’s depriving us of our future, I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe you’re surprised to hear I even have such a friend. I pride myself on being like my namesake, the honeybee. I travel amongst many flowers, gathering stories, collecting views and data, and cross-pollinating along the way. I then carry it all back to the hive, sometimes barely managing to fly because I’m so heavily laden. From the many perspectives I’ve carried home, I then proceed to make something nutritive (honey and royal jelly) and supportive (beeswax) to share.
Just like when I was a child and gathered in all the information before I spoke,
I need to take in everything before I can say anything.
I was so upset by my friend’s anti-environmentalist tirade that I went searching for the data. In fact, I need to thank him. It was this search that led me to realize I want to learn and discover more for myself from within the highly-touted “scientific community”. In recent years Science has simultaneously become its own religion and also been co-opted by political agendas. Teasing out what is true even here in the seeming realm of truth, is not a given. Because truth is relative.
Who is telling the story IS the story.
These are not black and white issues. There is no ultimate answer. We are learning to discern, to untangle the golden threads from the mass of straw that is our current information overload. We then weave the many golden threads together. Or, to come back to the kaleidoscopic bee vision, we learn to take in all the mosaic pieces of what we’re perceiving and make some sense of it. At least enough sense to be able to navigate to the flowers and make the honey.
This is tedious work and requires pulling back to do what we’ve generally failed to do for centuries — qualify and clarify terms. Not only do we fail to recognize that we see differently, we also assume too much about how we speak. Each realm has its language, even when we seem to be speaking the same language!
For example, even the title of the degree troubles me —Master of Environmental Management. After two years will I truly be a ‘Master of Environmental Management?’ Certainly, I’ll know a great deal more. Yet, ‘Master’ implies my learning will be complete. I feel mine will just be starting. And, I’ll be at the beginning of effective ‘bridge-building,’ with so much more to learn.
Moreover, management shares its etymological root with manacle, mandate, manipulate and command, all coming from “man,” which means ‘hands.’ ‘Manipulate’ originally meant to change something with one’s hands. There’s an implicit hierarchy in the word manage — we humans will supposedly be ‘manipulating’ the environment. Yet, as Bob Irwin said about the recent, unnecessary crocodile cullings here in Queensland, Australia — “This is not a crocodile management issue, but a human management issue.”
I’ve decided that for me this degree will be, unofficially, Honeybee of Human Management in Environmental Relations.
How we tell the story IS the story.
So much of our language reveals the worldview that got us into our current ecological conundrums. Words like ‘use’, ‘extract’, and ‘resource’ continue to support the colonizing paradigm we’ve only just begun to untangle. I met a retired paleontologist this week who used the word ‘exploit’ 3 times in our brief conversation — and he meant it in a good, normal way. Though the word had no negative connotations for him, each time he said it I cringed internally. Probably externally, too, because though I hadn’t said a thing, he started to get defensive.
I’ve been attempting to address this unconscious languaging in my stand up comedy. Maybe next time I’ll be quicker and ask him if he exploits his wife or his daughter…After all, we protect what we love.
In recent years I’ve lost hope, which, it turns out, is not such a bad thing as hopelessness leads to fearlessness, which in my case means I can boldly engage.
“…the Buddhist teachings tell us that the best, most potent time in our practice is the time when things go completely wrong and we hit rock bottom…It is a powerful time for us because we have given up hope; therefore there is no fear…We are not clinging so tightly and painfully to this sense of “me”, or so absorbed in ego’s self-centred concerns…
Of course, it is the worst time in our samsaric life; but it is a wonderful time for our practice because there is nothing to lose.” —Mind Beyond Death
The reason I’m going back to university now is because I have no fear.
And I trust the longer journey.
Shall we travel together?
You write and express your thoughts so well, Melissa.