As warmer temperatures kicked in over the past week, I watched the patterns of the snow as it melted and observed that snow on the grass disappears faster than snow on the concrete, even if the sun shines evenly on both. The snow on the grass melts faster even if it gets less sun.
I hadn’t thought about it before I watched it unfold over a span of days. The moment I did think about it, of course it made sense why this would be so:
It’s not just that the sun melts the snow; the earth absorbs it from below.
Talk about efficient: nature takes care of it from two angles.
If you’re looking for an elegant system to model, look no further than nature.
Nature’s organizing principles have an intelligence to them unmatched by anything humans could design.
It’s reflected in the cycles of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, the waxing and waning of the moon. It is evident in the way our hearts beat and our organs function, all without our needing to think about it.
When we get anxious, when we fall into fear traps and the culturally promulgated illusions that cause us to overwork and under-nourish, it is because we forget that we are a part of this divine intelligence.
Our belief in the illusion that we can control timing and outcomes, or even the direction of our thoughts, is our biggest source of self-sabotage. This belief causes us to resist the flow of life as it is, as we strive to create a flow as we think it should be.
Every being and organism in nature is subject to the same organizing principles, but only humans resist them.
Only humans believe that we can substitute our man-made linear time for the natural cyclical time. Only humans believe that we can avoid darkness through artificial light. Only humans believe we can gloss over “winter” and avoid the season of emptiness.
In that resistance we abandon trust. Without trust there is no feeling of safety. And without a feeling of safety we are unable to surrender to the type of nourishing rest that we require to restore and recalibrate.
Nature’s systems give us everything we need. Our only task is to trust the process.
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