Leisha Are we Nature?
There is something deeply human about pretending we are exempt from the rhythm we see everywhere else. Are we in this alone? Can we actually learn from observing nature and how she works?
The trees do not protest autumn. The river does not argue with the ocean. The soil does not panic when something falls into it and begins to break down. Everything participates.
So, the mantra becomes:
Life generates, life degenerates, life regenerates.
The pattern is not hidden. It is obvious, and yet we spend so much energy trying to step outside it or pretend we are above it.
Age sometimes gives us wisdom, and for me there is a quiet, welcoming relief in accepting that I am not here to conquer the cycle but to be a part of it, as best I can. We are here to move through it, to contribute to it, to be shaped by it and to, hopefully, gift ourselves to it in a positive way.
When you stop trying to outsmart death, life becomes poignant and powerful. There is less urgency to accumulate and more desire to enrich. The question shifts from “How long can I hold on to this?” to “How deeply can I inhabit it?” What am I really here to do, and how can that be established, gifted, and left?
Limits, when faced honestly, sharpen experience. They make colors richer and conversations matter more, and laughter feels less guarded. Humor appears in unexpected places because nothing has to be performed or preserved forever.
Trying to defeat mortality disconnects us from the web, it makes us rigid, it narrows perspective. But stepping into nature’s rhythm widens it. You begin to see yourself as part of a larger continuity, not separate from it.
Meaning does not grow from chasing immortality, it grows from participation, from adding structure to the soil while you are here, from strengthening the field for those who come after.
There is something almost playful about accepting this, it allows imagination to open, it allows gratitude to feel genuine, it allows belonging.
We are not outside the system looking in, we are inside it, cycling with it. If nothing else, the microbes teach us that.
In a handful of soil there are more organisms than people on the planet, and none of them are trying to conquer the others into submission. They are an orchestra working, being, adjusting, moving, helping, offering, and doing together. They exchange, they transform, they decompose what was and build what will be.
What looks like breakdown is often preparation to us silly humans, what looks like loss is often reorganization and self-less-ness.
And yet we build cultures around power, control, convenience, comfort, youth, beauty, materialism, conquering, and lording over. We design systems that remove us from season and soil, food that arrives without visible origin, beauty that erases age rather than honors it, wealth that accumulates without returning anything to the field. We polish surfaces while ignoring foundations, we celebrate the leaf but neglect the forest floor, we want harvest without compost, growth without surrender, longevity without change. We chase efficiency over relationship, speed over depth, control over participation. We extract minerals without restoring the land, consume calories without nourishing the microbiome, build empires without tending the roots. We prefer the appearance of strength to the practice of resilience, forgetting that resilience is born from diversity, decay, and interdependence.
The microbes show another way. Nothing is wasted, nothing is exempt, death is not an interruption but a contribution. Structure forms because something was willing to break down, fertility deepens because something was willing to release its form.
When we resist this, we become brittle, when we participate, we become resilient.
Perhaps the invitation is not to escape the cycle but to enrich it, not to dominate the field but to strengthen it, not to stand above nature but to belong within her processes fully and consciously.
For me, there is a strange kind of peace in remembering that we are not separate from the rhythm, we are an expression of it. We are temporary, yes, but also necessary. Our task is not to last forever, our task is to leave the soil better than we found it, whether that soil is land, relationship, community, or memory.
And there is a strange kind of peace in that.
