Sustainably Shifting from Blame to Action

Stephanie Zhu
3 min readMay 29, 2020

I’m tired of being sad.
I’m tired of being mad.

I get it.
The world sucks.

All the systems in place have failed us. Left America and the rest of the world in a confused state of disarray.

What to do about it now?
Continue being sad and mad and confused, and talking about it… it is not satiating me any longer.

Listening to others complain and victimize themselves.
I’m tired of it.

Action.
But what is the right action to take?

Deep self-reflection. The deepest I can go.

Where am I contributing to these systems I lament?

Where are my actions and DOLLARS feeding the very things that I blame for being the problems of the world?

Upon reflection, I realize that I worry the most about the things that I am living in dissonance with.

For instance, the plastic problem. I am plagued so much with thinking about the waste that is piling up so much in my own home, multiplying that by all the people in the United States that live in such disharmony with nature, every good we get packaged in layers and layers of packaging.

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Stephanie Zhu

Passionate about agriculture policy and agroecology. MS Student in Rural Sociology & International Agriculture and Development @ Penn State University