Chapter 5: Humans First, Changemakers Second

We are sharing this chapter of Act, Rest, Reset, Repeat by Katie Hodgetts for members of our Hopeful Book Club.

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Chapter 5.

“If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”
Emma Goldman

It was 2020, a year characterized by turbulence, burnout and isolation, and the power of the youth climate movement was beginning to wane. I knew I wanted to take action to fight the rising insurgency of fatigue, but I lacked the confidence. Only when an older activist, Bethan Harris, said she’d support me did I realize it would be foolish not to try. She offered her organization as the fiscal host for my project, meaning that I could access funding. After securing a tiny pot of seed funding, I started to build what would become The Resilience Project.

The work demanded a dozen hats: fundraiser, programme designer and reluctant communications expert. One afternoon, while I was talking it through with my friend Mick, he said, “Katie, I’m curious. How will you amplify the message of resilient campaigning if you’ve got about six followers on social media?” Always a straight shooter, our Mick.

He pushed on. “Listen, I’ve got time during my lunch breaks. Give me your login and I’ll follow the accounts you want to engage. Politically engaged young people, right?” It was an offer I jumped at. Support with social media would free me up to keep deep diving into why so many of us were so burned out. Little did I know that he’d be finding part of the answer. I handed over my password, thanked him and went back to my spreadsheets.

We met a few weeks later for a coffee. “So,” he announced, sliding into the booth, “I’ve followed and gained about a thousand people for you. You owe me five coffees, minimum – and probably a wage.”

I was elated. One thousand followers in two weeks. I’d been watching the number creep up. Engagement was steady and the initiative suddenly felt real. Curious to know his secret, I asked how he’d managed it so quickly.

“Easy.” He said, “All the youth activists – including you – have the same bio on Instagram. They state their name, age, pronouns, insert emoji of choice and then it states anticlimate change, trans rights, anti-capitalist, anti-insert-‘ism’ and final emoji to cushion the sentiment. I click follow. They follow back. They comment on how much something like this is needed. Voilà.”

I took a look through our followers and found that he was spot on. So many accounts defined themself by what they were for or against in the changemaking space. It was a nuanced bit of psychosocial insight that I couldn’t shake for years: the tension between defining (or presenting) ourselves by important values, but not reducing ourselves down to a changemaker first, human second. Was this my truth too? Did I define myself by what I was against rather than what I was fighting for? Absolutely.

As changemakers or activists or simply those who wish for a fairer world, it is easy to become deeply enmeshed with our work. There is immense power, requirement and pride in having this clarity of purpose, but when changemaking becomes the singular lens through which we view ourselves, it can also bring challenges. Over-identifying with the label of “activist” or “changemaker” can cause more harm than good. It can lead to moral battlegrounds and alienation from those closest to us, creating barriers in conversations with family and friends who may not share or understand our perspectives. It can also distort our work–life balance, leaving little room for self-preservation, fun and joy. Ultimately, it can pave the way to burnout and distract from one of the greatest adventures in life: getting to understand and accept who we are in our wholeness. The great bits. The silly bits. And the less bright bits.

So how do we cultivate an identity beyond “goodness”, “virtue” or “changemaking”, and why is that important for resilience? Your back might be up already, and you might notice yourself responding, “It’s not that I choose to overidentify with changemaking, it’s that nobody else is taking action and we’re in an emergency.” Totally, but have you considered that more people might join our movement if changemaking felt less stressed and more alive? “We don’t have time for this – how privileged, how selfish”, is a familiar narrative, and one that is no good for you, your sphere of influence and as I’ll demonstrate, changemaking itself. “I don’t have time or interest in something so vapid and selfinterested as a personal life.” I get it, and I have felt in my own journey the all-encompassing burden of the work. I have felt my internal eye be so judgemental that I couldn’t indulge in life beyond “virtue”. I couldn’t give myself the permission to let go of guilt and embrace fun, joy and lightness. This chapter is your permission.

Humans First, Changemakers Second

I began my changemaking journey critical of unequal and unjust systems, trying to use my energy and life choices to actively resist them. That meant building “who am I” by deciding “who I am not”. In a social media age of trying to squeeze our whole self into a Hinge profile or a social media bio, our “personhood” becomes one-dimensional. We are increasingly defined by causes and virtues. But identity isn’t finite, it is expansive. You are more than a bio, you are more than a changemaker. You are at minimum a fleshy meat sack, responding to tens of thousands of inputs of data each day. At maximum, you are infinite possibility. You are a creature with hopes, desires, interests and preferences. You are not a set of conditions, but a meandering river: dropping sediment, picking things up, forging pathways, eroding others, sometimes polluted, but always a hospitable environment for an ecosystem of aliveness. You have a name and a location, but the waters of your river are ever changing, ever moving. In the words of eco-futurist Octavia Butler, “All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”²⁴

That’s why in the first step of our eight-week programme, we ban the “c” word. In this case, it’s climate. But for this book, it’s changemaking. What might seem counterintuitive to a programme for youth concerned about climate is a route to meeting yourself liberated from the lens and scrutiny of “virtue”. You are not expected to share who you campaign with, have a deep working knowledge of power and privilege or profile your devotion to feminist ecology. In this space of meeting strangers, you must hunt for who you are beyond the fight. Speak about your hobbies, your interests and your family. What sets you alight on your weekends? Who do you think of when you’re sad? What do you cherish the most that you’re protesting to protect?

When we present ourselves as whole individuals rather than activists on a mission, we invite genuine connection, empathy and potentially greater collaboration. From the outset, we are minimizing the urge to view others through a lens of competition, instead through one of shared humanity. We do this as a crucial step in trust-based community-building, which is essential to creating the parameters for vulnerable sharing and transformation (Guidepost 2). In the previous chapter I propose that the solution to imposter syndrome is authenticity. Being authentic in who we are, rather than performing as who we think we should be, creates a safer container to allow us to vocalize things like “I don’t know the answer to that”, and “I feel like I’m not doing enough.” It offers us permission to grow, learn and change.

Authenticity recognizes that changemaking and let authenticity be the expertise are not grounded in antidote to perfect a performance of knowledge or virtue but the feelings of caring, living and owning your story. You are an expert in the youth climate movement because you are young, and you’ve felt betrayed. You are an activist against human trafficking because you care deeply about gender justice and are taking a stand. You may not have all the answers. Why? Because you probably don’t need to. You aren’t an elected representative or a university lecturer or a specialist. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t educate ourselves, we absolutely should. Read, listen, watch and learn from those outside your lived experience. Weave these learnings into your praxis and your approach. Continually iterate and change so that your work is uplifting others in the most meaningful way to them. But let authenticity be the antidote to perfect.

It is vital to recognize that we are multifaceted human beings with contradictions, imperfections and desires beyond changemaking. No one can maintain the impossible standard of unwavering purity or perfection. Engaging in interests and hobbies unrelated to your issue is not a betrayal of the cause. On the contrary, these pursuits are essential for creating balance and fostering joy. Whether it is exploring art, music, sports, travel or any other passion, these aspects of our lives provide much-needed energy and a renewed sense of purpose when we return to our changemaking. They allow us to connect with others on a human level, deepening relationships and building bridges with those who might initially feel distant from our political messages.

Who Would You Be in a Different Time or Space?

“Okay, so how do I figure out who I am?” That’s a meaty question and one which will take a lifetime of unpicking. Two offerings for starting this process are imagining beyond the crises and finding “pointless” joy. For the former, stoking a holistic sense of identity involves asking ourselves, “Who would I be if the climate crisis/justice crisis did not exist?” It’s a thought experiment to encourage us to imagine the parts of ourselves that might otherwise flourish if the world were free from different emergencies, which required mobilization. For example, if the climate crisis didn’t exist, my vocation might be in fashion. I bought my first blazer when I was 15. I covered my childhood bedroom wall with pages from Vogue. But when I became an activist, I abandoned the blazers. I changed my relationship with fast fashion for the better, opting for second-hand and thrifted clothes, but I also changed my aesthetic to better fit into the collective. Formal wear was considered the uniform of the capitalists, and highfashion gratuitous, so I switched the shirts for Dr Martens. Later in my journey, sustainable fashion influencers gave me permission to love fashion as an artistic pursuit rather than a vanity project. So, I started wearing suits again. I love a power suit – and didn’t think I was allowed to. It felt like a betrayal of the cause. But feeling more comfortable in my skin, getting creative with my expression and channelling the power that suits unlock in me has given me the confidence to both push back and push forward. I no longer blend in. I’m present. I take up space.

Finding out who we are beyond changemaking is not leaving the fight but absorbing nutrients from the different places we plant ourselves. While this quest may not take into account the contexts we exist in (such as financial limitations), it invites us to dig into the place where we dream and reconnect with our values, interests and relationships. It’s not to be framed as an exit from activism but a return to the self beneath it.

By broadening our sense of self-worth, we build a strong foundation that protects us from collapsing under the weight of individual campaigns. If an initiative falls short or a policy change fails to materialize, it does not define us as failures. When we are grounded in diverse sources of fulfilment, we approach our activism with renewed energy and focus, free from the fear that every setback is a personal defeat. With an understanding of who we are and what we love, we can find more outlets for coping with stress.

Moreover, nurturing a broader identity – one which is nerdy or flawed or a gym fanatic – helps build connections within our movements. It creates the precedent for nonactivism meet-ups such as craft days, Dungeons & Dragons clubs or wild swimming. Other examples for pursuits you could do together could include:

• Learning the hobbies of others. Make a rota so that everyone in your campaign group gets to offer a 15-minute lecture on something they love for example, trees, Marvel, baking, knitting. Engage with and celebrate them.
• Having monthly “non-activism” gatherings; for example, Extinction Rebellion Youth Bristol used to meet up for treeclimbing and bouldering. Fridays for Future Sweden created a “Spam” chat where they were able to speak about school. UKYCC did team-building exercises like online murder mystery games.

If you’re a solo changemaker and not part of a cohesive group, you could:

• Give yourself permission to engage in activities “inside the system”. Go to the cinema, eat out for dinner, read the latest cosy crime book.
• Dream up campaigns that weave together art, food and your hobbies with changemaking.

Seek Pointless Joy

A second suggestion for a pathway back to yourself is seeking pointless joy. A few years ago I was facilitating an eight-week programme with climate activists on burnout, with guest lecturer Lyndsay Burntonshaw. We were all between the ages of 16–24, sitting in a village hall discussing what brought us joy. In the first round of sharing, we all presented our hobbies. Some said “bouldering”, others said “painting”. But the longer we stayed in our sharing circle, the more answers shifted from traditional hobbies to genuine joy-based activities. One admitted, “To be honest, I used to love birdwatching, but now I go bouldering because my friends do it. I do enjoy it, but it’s not totally just for me.” Another confessed, through a muffled giggle, “To be really honest, what brings me joy is listening to One Direction.” Then a cascade of bright honesty followed: “I love playing my flute”, “I used to write poetry”. It was here that the idea of pointless joy was born.

Resilience is often misunderstood as grit, endurance and the ability to keep going no matter the hardship. But psychological research and history alike reveal that resilience is deeply intertwined with joy. Neuroscientists have found that laughter and play activate the brain’s reward system, reducing stress and reinforcing connection.²⁵ We may have all experienced that the human nervous system does not function well in a constant state of crisis. Movements survive not only because of strategy and sacrifice but because of the relationships, music, art, humour and shared connections that sustain them.

Historically, joy was often seen as a by-product of movements rather than a strategy. Protest songs were sung during the civil rights movement, and satirical postcards wove humour into the Suffragette campaigns. These moments show that joy was always present but not always acknowledged as essential. The shift became more explicit in the late 20th century, as activist communities reckoned with burnout. Indigenous resistance movements drew on longstanding traditions to weave storytelling, music and ceremony into their organizing, recognizing that cultural joy was inseparable from political survival. Anti-globalization protests in the 1990s introduced creative forms of direct action, from dance parties to carnival-like demonstrations. LGBTQ+ Pride parades began centring celebration as a tool for defiance. These echo in the tactics of modern campaigns. For example, in 2018 Extinction Rebellion transformed Waterloo Bridge in London into a “garden bridge” by filling it with foliage. Here, against the backdrop of environmental collapse, I sang songs, watched hula hoop dancers and saw people laughing.

Pointless joy distinguishes between conventional joy and what we do for joy, simply for the sake of it. In a society where we are weighed by our productivity, I’m taken by the idea of pointlessness. Changemaking is full of purpose and points. There is always a social media asset to be created, a campaign to operationalize or a problem to fix. It sits in a broader capitalism context, where focus has become less about the pursuit of truth and more about attainment, aspiration and achievement – follower growth, gross domestic product and climbing the ladder. Pointlessness, therefore, feels like reclamation of our time, rather than its commodification.

I started my own practice in pointlessness by making giant recreations of food. With my best friend, we’d bookmark a day at the weekend and bake huge and ridiculous versions of food, at home. Our niche was chocolate bars. What may seem a laughable jolly became a spiritual endeavour. It was pointless for several reasons. Firstly, the end product tastes average at best but, realistically, poor. Have you ever tried to boil a giant, single piece of ravioli? You end up with a sad pile of raw-ish pasta. And an enormous belly full of laughs. Secondly, it took hours to make and after a day, all I had left was photos and memories. I didn’t try to sell my creations, create an Instagram reel or monetize them. Among others I made a giant KitKat Chunky, a giant Crunchie (honeycomb candy covered in chocolate) and a giant Bourbon biscuit, known as the “bourboy”.

The deeper question I got to explore here was: what do I do, not for productivity but because it brings me joy and lightness for the sake of it? Of all the things I do, what am I doing for me, rather than to improve my dinner conversation, to be more interesting, to have a more alluring dating profile or improve my social status. While I enjoy podcasts, deep dives into the news, rock climbing and watching indie films, they have glimmers of productive value. Whereas making a giant chocolate bar? Not at all. What that does is dial up the fun, imagination and creativity.

It can be difficult to remove ourselves from the social matrix to interrogate what we do for ourselves and what we do, in part, for others. So here is a shortcut. What did you enjoy when you were a kid? Here, you were less concerned about your social status and more concerned with doing things that you really enjoyed. I used to write poems about bugs, play the recorder, design clothes, write stories and make videos with my pals. I fundamentally still love all these things, yet I make little space for them because they don’t contribute to my sense of productivity.

The first part of our reset is to uncover the human beneath the changemaker, recognize where we may feel impoverished and decide on our own unique and authentic ways to address our deficiencies. This involves scrutiny and analysis of a bigger question: Who Am I? And it involves recognizing that joy and lightness don’t negate the struggle but fortify those within it. As feminist Emma Goldman put it, “If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution.” In simple terms, joy is productive because it reminds us who we are and what we’re trying to preserve for future generations. It enables our sense of vitality, where momentum, radiance, imagination and life exist. To be a changemaker is not just to fight but to live; to dance in protest, to build movements that are not just about dismantling the old but imagining and embodying the new. Joy is not a luxury; it is an act of resistance. And perhaps, the most radical thing we can do is to insist on it.

EXERCISE: FINDING POINTLESS JOY

Objective: Before algorithms, CVs and Instagram, there was you – with all your weird, unmarketable passions. Let’s meet them again.

Step 1: Journalling

• What did you enjoy doing as a child?

Write down at least three memories that bring a sense of that childlike delight back into your body.

• What do you do that secretly serves your image, ambition or social status more than your joy?
• What do you love doing even though it makes you “less interesting” at parties or other social gatherings?
• What’s something you’ve stopped doing because it seemed silly, unproductive or pointless?

List two activities you’ve dropped because they didn’t feel “useful enough”. Do you miss them?

• What brings you joy and lightness, for the sake of it?
• What is your pointless joy?

Step 2: Commitment

Pick one thing you’re going to do this week that is entirely, unapologetically pointless. Something you do just because it makes you feel alive, absurd or connected to something tender.

Some ideas:

• Write a stupid song
• Build a fairy house in the garden and leave it there
• Do cartwheels and handstands in the park.
• Play the Sims or other games.
• Build a blanket fort in your bedroom.
• Make your own giant pizza.
• Have your friends over for a jam session.
• Find and gather sticks in the forest. Place them on top of each other. See how many you can balance until your construction falls apart.

The pointless thing you choose to do doesn’t need to  be Instagrammable. In fact, better if it’s not. This is a private revolution.