The Destruction of a Seed

Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) seeds.

I wish I could remember where I read this quote and who it’s from, because it’s really stuck with me over the years:

“To an outside observer, a seed germinating looks like complete destruction. The end of everything. A shell breaking apart, smashed to smithereens in an explosion of energy.”

Things are nothing like what they were before. It looks painful, uncomfortable, and scary. But the truth is, this is just transformation. Something new and good and necessary is emerging from that seed.

The shell must break.

In druidry, we try to live in tune with the seasons. We observe nature and what is happening outside and look at it, in part, as a lesson we can apply to our own lives.

I think something we can learn from spring is to sit with things that make us feel uncomfortable and try to see the possibility in them. A seed bursting open, plants pushing up through the ground, the perilous journey of a migrating songbird; all these things represent the discomfort of change.

I’ll give you another example: more and more people are realizing that a perfectly groomed grass lawn does nothing for the local ecosystem, and that insects need fallen leaves and branches to survive the winter and, well…to continue existing. Research suggests that over the past few decades, insect population have fallen by 45%. Some studies suggest the decline is much steeper. Habitat loss is a huge contributing factor in this situation - bugs simply have less and less space to live and carry out their life cycles. The hard truth is that they are disappearing. And without insects to pollinate our crops…we humans cannot survive. We all have to start doing something about this.

And yet, leaving the leaves on the ground until spring makes us feel anxious. We want to remove deadness from our landscapes because we are afraid of death. We cut down last year’s flower stems and chop up fallen trees. We’re worried that if we don’t, we’ll be judged for having a messy yard. People might think we’re lazy.

It’s not our fault we feel this way. The message we’ve been given most of our lives is that we need to make things look a certain way, need to have things tidy. Controlled.

When I first stopped mowing and “cleaning up” my lawn years ago, I felt so uncomfortable, especially when I had people over. I cringed and overexplained myself when people asked me why I wasn’t mowing and raking, why I was letting all of these “weeds” grow.

But that discomfort led to a complete transformation: my yard has gone from grass to thriving habitat. Bees, moths, birds, and dozens and dozens of different plant species make it hum. I understand now that those dead leaves, that messiness, brings new life. Do I still feel uncomfortable about it sometimes and itch to grab a rake and wipe it all clean? Yes. Because no one is perfect and it takes time to adjust to new things. The path is never straight.

Why am I sharing all this? Because I think it’s inherently human to look for hope everywhere, and maybe most especially in nature. And because we absolutely must start thinking and acting very differently if we are going to save this planet and each other. We have to move through the discomfort of massive change in order to get to the other side.

If we want to bring a new world into being, or even just change our own lives for the better, it isn’t going to be easy. We might have to have conversations that unsettle us, or hold our ground when we feel scared, or leave some things behind, or be bold enough to put new ideas out into the world regardless of the reaction we might get.

We must be brave and jump into that deep water.

Or maybe we can start small. How about we begin by just…leaving the leaves?