A couple of weeks ago, I marked an interesting milestone in my life. I celebrated my 50/50 day.
I can already hear you asking, what is a 50/50 day? Please allow me to explain, as it is a concept of my own creation.
If you’ve read my book, “Personal Use” (getting the shameless plug in early), you will know that I wasn’t always a north London-based hippy, but I began my life on the east coast of the United States of America. I moved to London in the early 90s, when I was my late 20s. I’m mid-50s now.
My 50/50 day is a way I’ve determined to mark my dual nationality, as it is the day where I have lived exactly half of my life in each country. So the first 50% of my life was spent in the states, the 2nd half of my life has been spent in the United Kingdom.
As I know my birthday and the date I moved to the UK, it was fairly straightforward to work out the exact date of my 50/50 day. I simply used an online date calculator that easily counts the number of days between dates. It worked out that I have lived over 10,000 days in each country. Wow.
Ain’t math amazing? And clearly I have too much free time.
But what does it actually mean, to mark one’s 50/50 day? All immigrants must pass this milestone, if they live long enough, so what’s the big deal?
For me, it is a way of honouring my dual heritage and reflecting thoughtfully about it. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to have a good time.
My paternal grandparents were Scottish and they moved to America and that’s where my father was born. My mother’s parents started their lives in Italy, and also moved to America before my mother was born. Both of my parents were first generation American-born, I was second. And then I moved back to Europe. It’s the circle of life, but with jet travel.
So I am half British and all European by birth, but my first nationality is legally American. I hold two nationalities now, as I am now also British, but what does it all mean? Other than a date I can point to as a midpoint in my geographic life, I guess it doesn’t mean that much. I just thought it was a cool thing to work out.
I always like to say, I am an earthling first. It’s what we all are, we are all earthlings. We scurry around on the surface of the Earth, which makes us all earthlings. It’s the one thing we all have in common. It comes before your race, your nationality, and your gender. You are an earthling, most of all.
“Hey, do you live on earth? Me too! That’s a huge thing to have in common. Let’s be best friends!”
We are the sentient, indigenous inhabitants of this planet named after dirt. Envy us, as we may be the smartest things that exist in the universe. Or pity us, as we may be the smartest things that exist in the universe. We may be as good as it gets.
Some say claiming you are a citizen of the world is controversial. Wasn’t it Terrible Theresa May who said it makes you a “citizen of nowhere”? It was.
What Terrible Terri doesn’t understand, and will never understand is that we are all citizens of the world. We are all really Citizens of Everywhere. We all flit about on the surface of this planet and while we may remain behind artificially delineated borders, we all share common hopes and common dreams. There is more that unites us, than divides us, as they say, but we forget this simple basic truth, so easily.
Countries and borders are made up creations. We decided all this nonsense, to keep us apart, when the reality is that we are all Citizens of Everywhere. Who is to say where on the surface of the planet, we are allowed to exist? What if I want to stand over there for a while?
We all need to think in these terms, if we want to have any hope of the continuation of the human race. We desperately need to be Citizens of Everywhere.
That may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. We are rendering the planet uninhabitable and we may reach a point, in the not too distant future, where human life will not be sustainable on Earth any more.
I’m not going to lay out the case for climate change here. I accept it is happening and I believe the official estimates of the rate of change are extremely conservative. It’s much worse than the mainstream media wants to admit. It’s a climate crisis and no warning is dire enough. Though to be fair, I am seeing this view slowly creeping into the mainstream, it’s just not creeping in fast enough. Listen out for the words ‘climate crisis’, they are being used more frequently by the media.
Sometimes, I hang out on a subreddit called r/collapse. It is not happy reading, but everyone deserves the truth. You can check it out RIGHT HERE.
The pessimist in me believes it is already too late, that the damage has been done and there is nothing we can do to reverse our inevitable extinction. But the optimist in me still tries to find some hope. It’s not easy, in the face of the overwhelming evidence, but I try, anyway.
Here’s a clip from a fictional TV show, called The Newsroom, from 2014. At the time of broadcast, it was considered over the top, now it is seen as visionary. Please take 5 minutes to watch.
Our denial over the impeding climate crisis is a bit like our denial of other existential threats in our lives. The easiest example of this, is our denial over death.
What do I mean?
I mean, we all know we are going to die. There is no cheating death, at least not yet. It is the only certainty. We can all expect to shuffle off our mortal coils, eventually. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, but we know one day, we will be gone. And somehow we put all of that out of minds and mostly live our lives with carefree abandon, day after day.
It’s the same with climate change. We put it out of our minds, we accept the gradual and dramatic changes, and we normalise them, quickly. It’s part of our in-built coping mechanism, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s how we get through every day. But our lack of attention to this detail, you know, that the entire planet is dying, only confirms our fate.
Ut oh.
I’ve been working as a journalist for 30 years, and I’ve been making the same joke in newsrooms for about as long. The joke is that I always hoped I would live long enough to be able to cover the end of the world. Funny, huh?
Now that I am confronted with the actual possibility (certainty?), I don’t seem to be laughing quite as much.
I don’t think the world is going to suddenly end, that’s not what I mean. The planet will still be here, but it will rapidly become inhospitable to almost all life. There may be some bacteria, or perhaps some of the extremophiles will survive, but you can say goodbye to all the plants and animals.
We’re animals, in case you need reminding, so that means bye-bye us.
Gosh, this started out being about me marking my dual nationality, and our global commonality, and somehow it lead me to the climate crisis.
Everything leads back to the climate crisis. It is the existential threat to all of our lives. And it might already be too late.
In that context, my 50/50 day, is pretty insignificant, but I marked it anyway. We all need distractions, even if it is a distraction from the end of the world.
Have a nice day!
PS – If you found any of this upsetting, you are not alone. Check out r/collapsesupport for help with coping. You are NOT alone. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.
The northlondonhippy is an anonymous author, online cannabis activist and recreational drug user, who has been writing about drugs and drug use for over 15 years. In real life, the hippy is a senior multimedia journalist with over 30 years experience of working in the industry.
The hippy’s book, ‘Personal Use’ details the hippy’s first 35 years of recreational drug taking, while calling for urgent drug law reform. It’s a cracking read, you will laugh, you will cry and you can bet your ass that you will wish you were a hippy too!
“Personal Use” is available as a digital download on all platforms, including Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iBooks and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The paperback is available from all online retailers and book shops everywhere.
You can also find the northlondonhippy on Twitter: @nthlondonhippy
