Heroes Not Zombies

I got down on my tummy and took this photo. What captured my attention was the delicate but vibrant life of this new leaf on its bright green stalk. I’ve come back to this image again and again to contemplate the incredible phenomenon of birth and growth……how a seed can germinate, push out stalks and leaves and begin a long journey upwards towards the Sun…..growing and maturing until it realises its full potential as a flower, a bush or a tree.

Ever since I studied embryology at university I’ve been in awe of how a single fertilised cell can differentiate into so many other types of cells, and how each cells develops in exactly the right place! I mean just think of it in terms of a human being…..how does that single fertilised cell which first divides itself into two cells, then four cells, then eight, and so on, grow a head where a head should be, a heart where a heart should be, and so on to create a beautiful fully formed baby? It still astonishes me.

But the other reason I return to this image is because I look at where the young plant is growing and I can see it is emerging from a forest floor covered in dead leaves. Right in that observation we see the basic principles of life and death….of how there are cycles to life, cycles of birth, growth, development, maturity, ageing and death. That story isn’t a straight line. It’s a circle. Many people have pointed out how, unlike human beings, there is no waste in Nature. Everything transforms into something else. We humans haven’t quite learned that trick and throw away, discard, dump what we don’t want. Where do we think it goes? What happens to all the waste we produce? What effects does it have on the complex, interconnected cycles of Nature on this little shared planet?

I’m already hearing economists and politicians say how they are looking forward to the world economy “re-starting” and saying “we need to get people consuming again”. Already they are talking about how to stimulate “growth” with little thought given to growth of what, and how that increased consumption is both sustainable in a finite planet, and how it fits with the cycles of the natural world.

My hope for after this pandemic is that we undergo what I recently heard an economist call a “metamorphosis”. He said “A butterfly is not an upgraded caterpillar”. What a great phrase! The current system is broken. It’s not meeting the needs of either the human race or the rest of life on this planet. It’s increasing inequality, it’s making us all more vulnerable and it’s teetering on the brink of total collapse.

We need a metamorphosis – we need to emerge from this crisis with new ways of living, new ways of meeting the needs of Life on Earth.