I am so tired of the notion of progress. Tired of time being seen as linear, a solitary line that expands into the infinite, always moving upward or forward, toward some unseen destination, improving, improving, improving. Never satisfied or satiated. I want to return to the worldviews where time was circular, cyclical, where we imagined ourselves in curves and bends instead of endless lines; Where things return, revisit, and get closer instead of constantly moving further away. When you live in a linear timeview, the future is always a blank, an unknown. In linear time we see ourselves as if on a train, moving from one station to the next, rewriting and revising our timetables and worrying about which train we’re on and whether we took the right line. In cyclical time we are stationary, and time moves through us. We know what the wheel looks like, and when each turn will come to pass: seasons, patterns, generations, eras. Knowing what’s to come – which is also what has been – allows us to exist fully in the present, to understand that the impermanence of the moment is what makes it truly beautiful, and to know that what is now has come before and will come again.
As a designer, I understand the value of iteration, the trial-and-error process that allows us to gradually develop an appropriate solution that meets the needs of our circumstance. The permaculture design process, like many, does use a cyclical model for its problem solving: Articulate goals, Assess, Design, Implement, Evaluate. I see the work of permaculture, with its focus on landscapes and plantings, to be enmeshed more than most disciplines in a circular concept of time. Yet I see very few people, permaculture designers included, myself included, who are able to live in the moment, to trust and embrace the abundance and confidence of a round worldview. Much like the Flat Earthers of centuries past, we are Flat Worlders, who live in scarcity mindsets, perpetually terrified of plunging off the edge of our comfort zones. Our calendars and lists and educations and workloads are heavy with lines, and we strive endlessly to push those lines forward and upward, toward some ever-lofty goal. We jump from deadline to deadline. Even the words we use – deadline – convey the opposite of the circular, cyclical life that we aim to cultivate. We chide people for “running in circles”, implying that they’re getting nowhere, learning nothing, wasting time.
I want to be a Round Worlder. I want to stay still in a single spot and watch time move through me, watch the sun and the moon and the stars and the seasons rotate around me, to live fully in the joy and beauty of a perfect autumn day precisely because I know that it will not last, but also that perfect autumn days will circle back again. I want to watch the circle of a human life, to see the generations and the life cycles of all beings intertwined like a singular, spectacular, enormous hoop dance. A constant push for progress and improvement does not allow for much celebration or reflection of the present, and we need much more of that balance in our overly linear lives.
regenerative parenting 