STRESS AND HARMONY

Andrew Millison's permaculture landscape design course at OSU described the principle of stress and harmony in these terms:

"Stress may be defined as the prevention of natural function or forced function, function with essential needs unmet; and conversely, harmony is the permission of chosen and natural functions, and the supply of essential needs."

Stress to natural forms or systems results in disorder, dysfunction, disease, lost energy, poor production or low yields, and even breakdown of systems to the point of untimely death. Harmony creates just the opposite: order, easy function, health, energy efficiency, high production and yields, and long lives well lived. This principle applies from the level of the individual cell on through more complex beings like plants and animals and on up to whole ecosystems and even the entire unified living being of the planet.

I found that this principle applies also to ourselves. When our essential needs aren't met, when we're forced to function beyond our unique limits, or when we're prevented by others from functioning in alignment with our natures we suffer stress, disorder, and disease. Stress, disorder, and disease are nature's way of revealing to us that our systems for living are in some way or ways inefficient, destructive, and basically fucked up. Our bodies would typically move towards balance, towards homeostasis, towards harmony, but we have to allow and support that work. This may include removing ourselves from any outside forces – toxic places, people, activities, lifestyles, relationships and anything else – which prevent or inhibit the development of our healthiest natural forms. Most of us would prefer to be healthy and happy, but we have to mind our real needs and values in order to achieve them. We have to prioritize and allow their fulfillment.

We can see that many "civilized" people – myself included, for a long time - try instead to force themselves out of alignment with their natures. The thing is, civilization and human “development” have failed to create healthy functioning systems for life on this planet. Each new generation is born amid these increasingly broken systems and has to find a way to adapt. Education and a now massive amount of media specify how we ought to adapt to the status quo. In a thousand ways every day we are told that we have to deny or suppress our natures if we hope to thrive in the world, to make something of ourselves – as if we weren't something already. And so deluded and poisoned, self-abusing in order to survive in a broken system and a destructive culture, we trudge onward. Homeostasis and harmony give way as we pursue money instead, all because we're deluded into actually believing that we need money to live more than we need life to live. That's some early-learned and hard-wired programming for many folks, but if we'll think about it for a moment, it's clearly fucking absurd. But that belief has prompted many of us to abandon the physical and emotional needs our natures actually require for healthy harmonious lives. Simply put, our priorities are fucked.

Fortunately, we can change our patterns. We can extricate ourselves from the man-machine clusterfuck and develop more harmonious ways of living. The hardest part may be recognizing or accepting who our “natural self” even is. All that shaping we've experienced up to now may have made us like bonsai trees, distorted and stunted all this time. We can't expect to be anything near to natural overnight. Neither could we abandon that tree to the elements and expect it to survive easily, if at all. Masanobu Fukuoka learned this the hard way when he left a cultivated citrus orchard to fend for itself – and killed most of it – in his early efforts at natural farming.

While our capacity to adapt can allow us to make some dramatic changes rapidly, a slower transition may reduce the immediate stress to the system and improve our chances of success and survival, like a smoker going cold-turkey versus phasing out tobacco over time. There may be failures, but no matter. If we're already out of balance, unhealthy, and miserable, then our best bet will always be towards improvement. 

It may take some experimentation, allowing ourselves to function in ways we may have prohibited before in order to figure out how best to harmonize. We can learn and improve as we go along. We were designed to do that. Remember that the point where personal choice leads to failure is also the point at which observation, reflection, and learning lead to personal growth. The more we may have separated our actions and lifestyles from our natures, the harder it will be to discover who our harmonious, natural self really is. But the only thing to do is keep trying. Remember that we will always be more than we could ever possibly imagine and that we will always be changing over time, anyway. Being naturally harmonious is not an end, but a process of constant discovery and adaptation which sustains health and joy.

So we have to ask ourselves often, “What nourishes and maintains my body and mind? What lifts up my heart and soul?” We must prioritize in our lives the answers to these questions if we are to minimize stress and develop and maintain harmony.

We might also avoid some unnecessary failure if we study the larger picture and observe its patterns before implementing big changes. Observing the grand scheme, we clearly see that we are connected and interdependent. Consequently, we must regard not only our own needs but also the needs of others.

We must consider our observations of the bigger picture, and within that context ask ourselves, “How might I arrange my natural functions in the world so that they don't simply coexist alongside those of others, but in what ways might my natural functions even complement the lives and function of others so that we both benefit? Where in the world is my natural self most useful, that I can find symbiosis there?”

The answers to these questions might allow us to better adapt to our world rather than waiting for it to adapt to us. And we can see that with this approach we could eventually develop harmonious systems of living between people, within communities, ecosystems and even the entire planet. Of course, there can be no global harmony without collective individual harmony. In an interconnected world, this means it can start with you.

Nature may have been presented to us as cruel, as survival of the fittest, as this against that. But nature doesn't see all that struggle, though, doesn't give a shit how we describe it. Life just seeks balance over time, and it uses so many natural patterns and systems to accomplish that balance. The patterns of nature don't care whether or not we fight them, but they will end us one way or another in any case. We can either go with the natural flow, harmonize and enjoy the ride and die, or we can fight against the flow, struggle, stress and die. The choice is yours. 

Choose well and be well, friends.