Ecology of the Self

After a long, hot summer, the autumnal rain is finally here. The searing temperatures of the last couple of months have dropped away and it seems like all of life is breathing a sigh of relief. The rain has come at last. Heavy grey skies suggest that more is to come.

Looking up at those dark, brooding skies hunched over the skyline, I wonder if they think about their life, their work, in the same way that we do. Do they feel guilty for not raining down on the earth sooner? Do they worry about whether the raindrops are too big, too cold, too frequent or infrequent?

Or is that kind of self-flagellating rumination a uniquely human experience? After the recent drought, I suspect the clouds have better things to do than worry about how good they are at raining!

Clouds are what they are. They float above us doing cloud things, responding to the conditions around them. If the air is warm and moisture gathers, the clouds will form. If the conditions are right, they will release their rain….sometimes in a torrential downpour, like last night’s thundery storm, sometimes a few drops, as it is doing right now. And sometimes, they float off leaving a clear blue sky.

I doubt they’re judging their performance, like we humans do. The clouds don't seem to take any of it personally. Unlike us!

We can spend extraordinary amounts of time thinking about whether we're doing life properly. Whether we're working hard enough, being kind enough, achieving enough, looking after ourselves properly, making the right choices. We can replay conversations, regret decisions, compare ourselves with other people and worry about all the things we think we should have done differently….sometimes weeks, months, years after the event. We seem to have developed the remarkable ability to turn simply being alive into a performance review. A scorecard of our effectiveness, our attractiveness, our likeability.

What if we thought about ourselves as an ecosystem? Ecosystems aren’t made up of perfect things. They’re made up of relationships, change, growth and decay, abundance and scarcity. Some things flourish while others struggle. Things come and go. Nothing exists in isolation and everything is in a constant state of change.

Our bodies change. Our energy changes. Our relationships change. Our capacity changes. There are times when we flourish and grow, times when we need to retreat and rest… or just simply get through the day.

If we can learn to be at ease with being a system -  a something that is in process and constant change -  rather than being a someone that has to make perpetual progress which has to constantly achieve, then perhaps we might learn to be a little gentler on ourselves. Perhaps we could learn to be willing to meet ourselves as we actually are. Perhaps we could even learn to enjoy the rain?

Like the rain, perhaps sometimes we arrive a bit late, or we’re a bit torrential. It’s ok. We don't need to add another layer of suffering by deciding that, because we are imperfect, we have somehow failed. The clouds don't do that. They gather. They change. They release what they have to give. And eventually, they move on. Perhaps we could learn something from them.