Fair Share: You Don’t Have to Become the Forest Before You Sow a Seed
There is an idea about healing that sounds perfectly reasonable.
Take care of yourself first.
Do the work. Heal the wounds. Get your life in order. Find some stability. Become financially secure. Figure out who you are. Fill your own cup.
Then, when you finally have enough, you can give something back.
There is wisdom in some of that. We cannot endlessly give from depletion. We cannot confuse self-sacrifice with generosity. There are seasons when protecting our energy and tending to ourselves may be exactly what is needed.
But nature shows us something else, too.
Nature certainly doesn't wait until it is an old-growth forest to start sowing seeds. Neither do we have to wait until we're completely healed to have something worth sharing.
In fact, nature rarely seems to separate growing from giving at all.
Maybe we shouldn't either.
Fair Share Is More Than Sharing the Extra Tomatoes
Fair Share is one of the three ethics at the heart of permaculture, alongside Earth Care and People Care.
It can be easy to understand Fair Share as generosity.
The garden produces too many tomatoes, so you bring a bag to your neighbor.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Please bring me tomatoes.
But Fair Share goes much deeper than deciding what to do with the surplus after everything else has been taken care of.
In a healthy living system, sharing is built into the design.
A flower produces nectar that feeds a pollinator. The pollinator helps the plant reproduce.
Leaves fall and become food for fungi and microorganisms. Those organisms help make nutrients available to plants.
Fruit feeds animals. Animals carry seeds. A dead tree becomes habitat.
Water falls, moves through vegetation, enters soil, feeds roots, evaporates, condenses, and eventually falls again.
There isn't some moment at the end when the forest looks around, determines that it has accumulated enough resources, and decides to become generous.
Exchange is happening all the time. Reciprocity is part of the system itself.
That changes the question. Instead of asking only: What do I have left over that I can give?
We might also ask: How could I design my life so that my well-being contributes to the well-being of the systems I belong to?
The Seed Is Reciprocity
Consider a seed.
We could look at the seed as something a plant produces and then gives away.
But that isn't quite right.
The seed isn't merely something the forest gives away. The seed is how the forest continues becoming.
The distinction matters.
Giving and becoming are not separate events.
The seed might feed a bird. The bird might carry another seed somewhere else. A seed might germinate beneath a gap in the canopy. Its roots begin interacting with soil organisms. Its leaves capture sunlight. Eventually it may produce flowers, fruit, shade, habitat, organic matter, and seeds of its own.
The forest gives, receives, changes, responds, and grows. Again and again.
The seed is reciprocity unto itself.
And perhaps we humans have made an unnecessary distinction between becoming whole and participating in the world around us.
We imagine: First I heal. Then I contribute. First I become whole. Then I give. First I figure myself out. Then I belong.
But what if participation is part of the healing?
What if giving and receiving are part of becoming whole?
What if belonging isn't the reward waiting for us at the end of our healing?
What if belonging is one of the conditions that helps us heal?
How could I design my life so that my well-being contributes to the well-being of the systems I belong to?
One Crack in an Old Runway
I have spent a lot of time walking the former runways of the old Naval Air Station in South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
They are a remarkable place to watch succession.
Human beings created an enormous disturbance there. Forest and fields became runways, roads, buildings, compacted ground, and pavement.
Then conditions changed. And life responded.
Nature did not stand at the edge of the runway waiting for someone to remove every piece of pavement and restore perfect soil conditions.
A seed found a crack. Then another.
Plants established themselves where they could. Organic matter accumulated. Roots entered spaces that had been empty. Insects arrived. Birds arrived. Seeds moved.
Conditions began changing again. That is succession.
There is no requirement that the mature forest exist before restoration can begin.
In fact, the early plants help create the conditions for what comes next.
They aren't failures because they aren't the forest yet.
They are part of how the forest becomes.
I think about this when we decide we aren't ready.
When I have more time. When I have more money. When I know more. When I'm healthier. When my relationship is better. When the kids are older. When work settles down. When I've healed this part of myself. When I finally feel confident.
Then I'll volunteer. Then I'll teach. Then I'll create. Then I'll reach out. Then I'll help.
Then I'll participate.
But life doesn't wait for climax conditions.
There is almost always some place where life is beginning again.
One seed. One crack. One relationship. One conversation.
One small act of participation at a time.
You don't have to become the forest before you sow a seed.
Sometimes Giving Is Part of Healing
This doesn't mean giving everything away. It doesn't mean abandoning boundaries.
And it certainly doesn't mean that someone who is hurting owes the world their labor, time, money, or emotional energy.
That isn't Fair Share either.
A system that continually extracts from one part to sustain another isn't demonstrating healthy reciprocity. Eventually something becomes depleted.
Fair Share includes you.
But there is an enormous space between self-sacrifice and waiting until we are perfectly healed before we participate.
Sometimes we discover something about ourselves by helping someone else.
We teach something we know and understand it better.
We grow food for another person and become more connected to our own food.
We sit beside someone who is struggling and remember what helped us when we struggled.
We volunteer and discover community.
We share an idea and someone else's response changes our understanding of it.
We plant a tree knowing that someone we will never meet may someday sit beneath its shade.
Something moves outward. Something comes back.
Sometimes what comes back isn't money, recognition, or even gratitude.
Sometimes it is connection. Meaning. Perspective. Belonging. Purpose.
We began with the idea that once we heal ourselves, generosity can flow naturally from our wholeness.
I still think that's true.
But sometimes generosity is part of how we heal.
What If We Designed for Reciprocity?
This is where Fair Share becomes something much more interesting than charity.
Imagine designing reciprocity into our lives from the beginning.
A garden can grow food for the gardener while also feeding pollinators, building soil, slowing water, creating habitat, producing seeds, teaching children, feeding neighbors, and eventually providing food for people who need it.
One garden. Many relationships.
We can ask the same thing of our businesses, organizations, families, communities, and lives.
Does our work only produce income, or does it also produce relationships, knowledge, opportunities, beauty, or something useful to others?
Can what we learn make someone else's path a little easier?
Can the systems that sustain us also sustain other people?
Can our waste become someone else's resource?
Can our healing increase our capacity to be present with another human being?
Can our prosperity create conditions in which others can prosper too?
Can we build communities where receiving help naturally creates opportunities to contribute, rather than dividing everyone permanently into helpers and helped?
This is different from accumulating as much as possible and occasionally distributing the excess.
Fair Share begins in the design.
There Is No Finish Line Called Whole
Maybe this is one of the strange things about being human.
We keep imagining there is a finished version of ourselves somewhere ahead.
The healed me. The successful me. The enlightened me.
The person who finally has enough.
Nature doesn't seem particularly interested in finished things.
Forests change. Rivers move. Trees fall. Seeds germinate.
Disturbance comes. Succession begins again.
Even an old-growth forest is still becoming.
Maybe wholeness isn't something we achieve before we can participate.
Maybe wholeness is something that emerges through relationship.
Earth Care reminds us that we belong to a living world.
People Care asks us to tend the relationships within it, including the relationship we have with ourselves.
And Fair Share asks us to participate in the flow.
To give. To receive. To circulate.
To contribute without disappearing.
To accept help without believing that receiving makes us less valuable.
To recognize that what grows in one part of a healthy system can nourish another.
And then to keep becoming. Perhaps there is a seed you can sow today.
Not when everything is fixed. Not when you have finally figured yourself out.
Not when you become the person you think you're supposed to be.
Today.
Nature certainly doesn't wait until it becomes an old-growth forest to start sowing seeds.
Why should we?
The seed isn't merely something the forest gives away.
The seed is how the forest continues becoming.
Maybe we are, too.
The Ecology of You™ is a 12-week guided journey into your own ecosystem, allowing you to map the conditions of your life to make meaningful, lasting changes exactly where you need them. Learn more at The Ecology of You
Comments