Peristalsis

If you believe everything the economists tell us, pumped out at every opportunity by the media, everything will die if we don’t keep growing. I myself have been known to opine that “The only sign of life is growth”. But just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean its not happening. Take chickweed. Or grass. We’ve had a dry summer this year. So much so that the grass turned to straw and the neighbour’s chickweed died away. It all looked like it would never recover. But then the rains came, and you could see the shoots popping up as you watched. Where was it? Just waiting for conditions to change.

Lake Eyre, in Central Australia is a really good example of this. Bone dry most of the time, it’s set in the middle of the desert, totally bereft of anything green. Occasionally the rains come there too, and when it does the Lake fills with water, feeding the desert with the most stunning array of flowers you could ever imagine. Where were they? Just waiting. They last for such a short time, but they have their time.

Once a wise woman told me that if the tide is out in your life, and you cannot imagine it will ever come back, remember that it’s building up somewhere, even though you can’t see it. There will come a time when it is right for the tide to return. Then you will witness it. In the meantime, you just have to wait.

Waiting is something humans do badly. At least they do now. Maybe when we allowed ourselves to also be part of Nature, we were patient with our lives. In a book I once read about a woman who researched wolves, she observed that their normal behaviour, in their own company, was to just lay around together. Accepted by them, she tried to do the same alongside them, but the human behaviour, either instinctual or by training, was to move around all the time, with agitation if this was not possible.

I believe this is cultural. There is an inbuilt rhythm in Nature to expand, followed by a contraction. Indeed, our body is doing it all the time. Breathing in, then out, it fuels us through life. The entry into this life through the birth canal is the same fractal, as is the movement that voids our bowels. So why is it that we feel there is something wrong when the urge to take space, to do nothing, to go into revery, comes over us? Why do we tell ourselves we should get up and get on with it? Get on with what exactly?

The process of life is one of balance. When that balance is interrupted, a crisis ensues. How many crises have we created in our own lives by the refusal to stop, to take notice that something had wound to a halt; a conversation, a relationship, an interest, or a way of being? I have had to help so many people stop taking anti-depressants because they were essentially using them to keep themselves where they were. Even though it was damaging for them to stay, the fear of change was so great that they didn’t have the energy to choose differently. They needed to stop what they were doing for a time, then choose a different, healthier direction. Our social mores discourage us with regard to change, endings, and beginnings, or even taking a pause to see where we find ourselves.

We are all floating in this crucible called Life. We have tried so hard to overrule it, to keep what we believe we have to have, to our detriment. As we look around us, the state of the Planet that we have never let up on, or allowed to recover, we have a ringside seat at the tragedy unfolding before us. Many of our lives are a micro copy of the same drama. Maybe it’s time to stop, giving ourselves some downtime, as they ironically call it. Maybe then we can allow the possibility of returning to the peristaltic movement that is Natures balance. Some things have to end. Could it be the destructive habit of thinking we just have to push through? Summer will return with the tide if we just wait, watching for the signs, moving with them instead of digging in our heels against them.

The Book of Runes tells us that ‘when fishermen can’t go the sea, they mend their nets’. But if there are no fish left, maybe they need to become farmers and grow crops.