Slow Growth

I did geography when I was in Junior College as part of preparation for A Levels. There was only a class of about 12 science students in the whole cohort in that class. And we spent about half of the subject studying Physical Geography- which is about the most science you can get in a subject somehow classified as a humanity. Maybe Economics comes close but at A Levels, it was mostly dumbed-down nonsense nowhere close to the reality of the discipline.

So I had spent lots of time understanding processes of weathering, of meandering rivers and changing landscapes – through earthquakes over seconds or minutes, volanic eruptions over days, seasonal storms over weeks, floods that can be month-long or other gentler processes over years.

For most part, change in our natural landscapes take place silently, over a really long time. And more often than not, they are shaped not by outwardly resisting the status quo, but by almost blending into it while effecting change. The rock changes the course of a stream but the stream water reshapes the rock.

If we are committed to growing slowly and changing the world around us slowly, we will find that time is on our side. But we need to start with the belief and the story about what we are doing.