Cultivating resilience

A scrappy little tomato plant in a neglected garden can survive, if it has resilience within itself:

Individual toughness.
Hardiness against temperature and drought.
Resistance to common pests.

A gardener, on the other hand, has the opportunity to cultivate a garden which itself is a resilient system:

Soil rich with healthy microbes.
Topography that facilitates good moisture levels.
Complimentary plants that encourage pollinators and discourage pests.

Here's the thing:

Each of us needs individual toughness.

But we're not just individual plants in soil.

We're also cultivating our own environments, for better or worse.

We're contributing to the systems in which we, and those we care about, live and work.

Let's build systems that are resilient in themselves.

By creating predictable pathways.
By encouraging curiosity.
By prioritizing human connection,
even where it may seem inefficient to do so.

I see too many of my people -- friends, clients, colleagues -- trying to be resilient on their own, while the systems they work in grow increasingly inhospitable to the people that power them.

Technology has its place.

But in the end, our work is about helping people flourish.

When squeezing out inefficiency turns into squeezing out human joy, it's time to take a breath and remember why we're here.

All the best,
A.