Cultivating patience and resisting the temptation of the quick fix
By Kim Deans
When we step off the high input, industrial farming treadmill and take a regenerative path that restores nature’s capital and creates conditions for all of life to thrive we inadvertently bump headfirst into our impatience. We can see the possibility of a different reality and the benefits that will bring. We want to be there now, we have no time to waste. So many landholders that we have worked with, aged from their 40’s to their 80’s have expressed to us “we don’t have much longer to fix this, we are getting older”, there is a very real urgency in their quest to leave their land in better condition in time to enjoy the fruits of their labour. They are on a quest to find the answers to fixing this quickly and seeing the results they dream of as soon as possible.
The path towards regeneration is a marathon not a sprint. Working with nature is built on a foundation of patience. It takes time for natural processes to heal and restore their functions. The industrial farming paradigm is built on impatience and quick fixes, the urgency to spray out chemicals to kill problems becomes second nature. When we stay in this mindset we approach regeneration through a lens of looking for nicer ways to kill things and simply changing our inputs. Doing the same things differently and expecting different results. Changing inputs is unlikely to deliver the regenerative outcomes you desire. Regeneration requires a whole systems approach and a complete mindset shift where we rewire our tendency for instant gratification. Anything short of this is still treating symptoms not root causes.
Walking a regenerative path is about cultivating patience. Patience is not passive, it is a state of being rather than a state of doing. Patience is not doing nothing, taking action is essential. Patience is knowing when to stop doing and let go of control. Patience arises from wisdom and connection with ourselves and nature. Patience is remembering that nothing in nature blooms all year round, that in nature there is always a time to grow and a time to rest. That in nature the seeds we sow have the intelligence to lie dormant waiting for the perfect conditions to shoot and grow.
We harvest the crops from seeds sown months before and wait patiently for lambing and calving and livestock to grow to saleable weights. Taking action at the right times and letting go at others for plants and animals to grow is inherent in agricultural systems. A regenerative mindset sees how ALL of our actions are sowing seeds for the future we want to create. Every action we take is either planting seeds for regeneration or planting seeds for further degradation.
We can have all the good intentions in the world yet when we don’t tune into the system and listen for when to let go and allow nature’s processes to work we can inadvertently push the system in the wrong direction. In Donella Meadow’s writings on systems thinking she mentions the work of Jay Forrester from MIT who described complex systems as being counterintuitive. “Leverage points are not intuitive. Or if they are, we intuitively use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve.”
Cultivating patience as we transition towards more regenerative systems is a practice of slowing down and pausing to remember our long term view before we take quick fix actions. It is a practice of staying aligned with our vision and our values to avoid taking the one step towards a quick fix that can put us many steps in the opposite direction of our regenerative goals. We learn to intentionally shift our focus away from killing life towards promoting life when we find ourselves tempted off course. We build our tolerance for being out of our comfort zone as we walk a regenerative path. We can link in with a supportive network of peers, a mentor or a coach so we have a sounding board for those times we are struggling to stay on track.
“Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time”
Jon Kabat Zin.
Reference: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/