The seed doesn't rush the fruit

(PS: Make reading this even more immersive by adding music: if you want to add a calming auditory experience to reading this, play this music playlist by Austin Farwell right here, for you to have the best experience of taking this all in - it has gentle piano soundtracks and has no loud sounds)

I started this Monday feeling the usual Monday-ness of expected busyness - to rush, to start, to get it allll done today - all the work of the week - in one day!

That's just how we're trained, aren't we? It's all about speed, rush and urgency for anything and everrrything. It felt like a dark-gray-heavy cloud weighing on my head when I woke up. As if there was an old-school top-hat-wearing-and-buttoned-up-in-a-suit factory owner, the master, waiting with a fob-chain clock on his jacket (can you tell I am watching The Gilded Age haha) and the tick tock sound of the needles playing, showing me that I am late and I am behind and my mind was racing with thoughts like when and how will I get it alllll done?!

Meanwhile, my body asked for gentleness as it managed the various somatic experiences I am currently going through. I could feel the soreness all over even when I slept well, my breath waiting for me to find my way back to it, so it could go deeper, my heart waiting to feel my hand on it so it could slowly feel the rhythm of life within me — a reminder that my body was already doing its thing, without clocks, without timetables and reminders and without a (gasp!) plan.

After a few longer exhales and checking in with my body, and taking time to be fully present with it even as my mind was fighting the urge to slow down (but, but but I need to do this/that… going on in my head), I could suddenly hear the truth of this moment. It was that actually I need to go slower to reach faster. Yeah, read that again, go slowerrr to reach faster.

With that little perspective shift, many questions came pouring in for me on how foolish this rush seems now and I asked myself why do I this every single Monday?

Why do I ask myself to show the fruit when I plant the seed? Who planted this rush within me? Why does it feel wrong to go against this rush and to slow down and to be present? Why does my mind resist when I go against this rush and do what my body actually needs?

I know why, now, because this rush is a survival mechanism my body learned long ago to 'fit in' in a capitalist society that deemed speed as a marker of growth and made rest seem the antithesis to growth because you weren't being 'productive'. It has taken me years to get this answer but awareness isn't enough to undo the rush within myself.

I wonder when and where did we learn and accept this rush as our nature? Who makes it okay to rush but not okay to slow down, to rest, to go within ourselves, to connect with life more?

When you sit down and pay attention to your body, it is plain as daylight truth that you can only connect with life more when you slow down and it does not matter how much you resist it in the name of 'practicality' (another gift from capitalism! rolls eyes).

Instead, ask yourself, why does the current society we live in award us for busyness and rush but not for connecting with life? When did we get so disconnected with the pace of our nature? When did the pace of nature itself become so wrong for us? When did alignment with the seasons become so wrong for us? When did aligning with what our body needs become so wrong for us?

The more I learn about my body through various therapies and meditation in the last few years, the more I know slow is always more efficient - and ironically enough faster. You always get there, where you want you're meant to go - but the choice is between reaching there with truth, alignment and ease for yourself and your body or reaching there burnt out, exhausted and tired of life.

How are we as a whole human race getting this so wrong? How are we still rewarding the performative nature of being busy - whether at work or at home - instead of spending time just being human?

Do you think a seed rushes to deliver the fruit the day it is planted? Do you think it feels it needs to grow faster, do more, show more 'results' of its growth with leaves, flowers and fruits - quicker, sooner and faster? No.

Because we can't rush nature because it knows it is not sustainable to grow quicker - and while we know that, we forget one big fact - the fact that we are also part of nature - the same nature we marvel at, the same nature we go to see to feel relaxed, the same nature we see in our beloved plants, pets, birds and the bees.

Yes, we are part of that same 'nature', and when you hear this how does this fact sit within your body? How do you feel when you think about being nature?

How do you see your life around you right now - this very moment as you read this in this moment, wherever you are at your home, in your bed, in transit - when you know now that you are indeed, nature.

You ARE nature - and everything around you is there for you to explore your being, your life force, your spirit and not the other way around.

As you sit with this realization, check-in with your body right now, where are you feeling lightness and where are you feeling tightness? Go on, take a moment to do this.

Check-in with your thoughts for the day ahead, do they now still seem to define you or do they seem to just be a passing cloud - distant from you - not your nature but just part of it all, part of the sensations, the feelings, the emotions, the being - this whole life experience - and can you just for a moment be with it all, take it all in, see the nature-ness of yourself and connect with that part?

We all know that a seed is the ultimate container of a flower, a tree, a fruit and given the right amount of time and the right conditions, it flourishes, blooms, grows and delights - never rushing or forcing the timeline, never doubting the fruit will come, all it does is just be its nature and day by day the growth compounds.

And you, my dear fellow human, are a seed containing all your dreams, your future, your desires, your visions. So I ask you, can you just be? be still like a seed, patient like it, trusting in your own nature and the nature's force within you? Can you just be nature? Can you trust its pace? Can you not rush past through your life here in the chase of an imaginary future?

fin.

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