4 | delayed gratification
(originally written 15.07.24)
Through connecting with my body and working with clay I have learnt that beauty in life is rarely instant. Patience is required. Presence. Humility.
I grew up in the age of smartphones. Well my first mobile was from my aunt and looked more like a brick and had an antenna that would make a Longhorned Beetle question his masculinity. It did the job of getting me to school and back and communicating missed trains to my parents as I embarked on the daily commute into Edinburgh, Scotland. At 630am Dad would yank my feet in an effort to get me out of bed where I was royally cocooned. The room would be cold, my bed soft. I moaned and groaned until the very last minute where my lacklustre school clothes would be scruffily thrown on and Dad’s racing heart could settle a little. We scoffed the breakfast that Dad lovingly prepared and drove (often in the dark) half an hour to the local train station to catch the 730am train to the ‘big smoke’ (bye Dad). As the train drew into Haymarket station we embarked on the last leg by foot, a swift 30 minute walk, so that we arrived at school in time for the 830am bell. Commutes, particularly the winter ones, were pretty trying for sisters and parents alike. But I have digressed…
I grew up in the age of smartphones and the internet, the age we’ll remember as the great collapse of good posture. By the time I was a teen, I could easily look something up online in a flash if I wanted to; I no longer needed to engage in a conversation or debate or consult the crusty pages of some book. Today there’s e-commerce and home delivery. Ready made meals and canned fruit water. From my place of privilege, if I need something I can have it - practically yesterday. I can have a Thai chicken curry without knowing what the sub-ingredients look like, smell like and taste like individually*. In consumerist societies, the attitude seems to have become one of “Why would we take the time to bake sourdough if we can buy it in the shop? Why would we darn our socks when a new pair is there on mass and cheap?”
As the years have gone by we have become impatient when a web-page does not instantly load; utterly disconnected to where our food came from and how ingredients were grown; frustrated when a next-day delivery option was not offered Life has become “easy” but at what cost? Is this soulless sea of impatience and entitlement really worth the convenience? What effects is it creating across a deeper time frame that we are not aware of?
“Are we alive or are we not dead” ~ Esther Perel
As I meandered through the south of France, visiting Nairobi friend’s on their home turf, it became apparent to me that this individualist entitlement has begun seeping deep into different spheres of life. A common perspective I kept hearing about the French elections was that “people do not vote for the collective, they vote for their personal benefit”. Change is being demanded now, with the hope that it makes life (for some) more favourable in the immediate term. There was little consideration for what these extreme right policies might have led to over the long term. The envisioned instant gratification would likely suffocate any potentiality for delayed, collective reward.
I am not entirely blaming technology, innovations and a convenience culture for the erosion of the collective in place of the individual. But, I do think that this accustomization to instant results and things being done for us means we spend less time in community, less time collaborating, less time conversing to find the answers and less time chatting to the person behind the counter as we make a purchase. And as we reduce ourselves from citizens to mere consumers, what emerges is a lack of connection to the collective. Life risks becoming more insular than we perhaps dare to admit. Yet this all feels unnatural and wildly unrewarding. In fact, it doesn't just feel unnatural, it simply is. Nature doesn't hurry. Nature works as a complex, dynamic system. Nature is alive and interconnected. Are humans?
“We need more connection in a less material world. Connection as wealth” ~ Nick Hagens
As Dad showed us girls how to plant fragile saplings and Mum how to sow brave vegetable seeds, we were taught that the most beautiful things in life take time, require nurturing and may not always end up quite how you hoped or expected. Sometimes they end up more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. I am no heroine. I would struggle to tailor my own trousers and my baking is more worth questioning than photographing. But, I do have patience and I do believe that in which we direct time, intention and love towards creating is healing us in some little way which we may not have realised we needed.
I am about to move into a beautiful shared house in Nairobi, Kenya which has an unusual abundance of land. With this we hope to start a community permaculture project. The soils will need support to regenerate yet with this there is a wonderful opportunity to engage people in experiencing delayed gratification. Countless hours of working with the land will be asked before signs of change are observed. If we are lucky, there will be harvests with time. I have been asked a few times why I would engage (and invest) in this project when I am unlikely to be there long enough to see the transformation. Well, that is exactly the reason for doing so.
I get this strange sense of relaxation and humility when I think of life and projects across a deep time perspective. That my role within the project is a tiny part of a greater whole. All I can do is show up with love and put that loving quality into this tiny patch of soil (in the scheme of all earth’s soils). That this tiny contribution is bound to have some sort of future ripple effect in service of life and that’s all I need to believe to become involved at this stage. It is in fact quite liberating to not have the expectation of any instant reward.
“The future is generated day by day, word by word, conversation by conversation, and action by action, rather than through partial and exclusive solutions applied at one scale or another” ~ O’Brien et al, 2023
What does clay have to say about delayed gratification?
A bit like the garden, when I work with clay it takes time for the creations to be ready. I cannot just show up and have what I want right there and then. It takes time. Time to prepare the clay. Time to make the imperfect creation. Time for it to dry. Time to tidy and texture and detail. Time to fire. Time to glaze. Time to fire again. Only at this moment do I walk away with my source of pleasure cradled in my hands.
And beyond the patience that is needed, I have also grown familiar with the unknowingness of how the piece will turn out. How much will it shrink this time? Might it crack or break in the kiln? How will the temperature and clay and glazes interact? These multiple and interconnected possibilities for chaos force me to be present at every stage of the making journey. It gives me agency when I carefully consider how each stage may play out. I work to limit unexpected turns yet knowing that the elements have an unworldly intelligence of their own.
The creation becomes a snapshot of time. Within it are minerals, plant life, and animals. Tiny, tiny particles of each that were formed over time. It carries the memories of rivers that once flowed over it and rain that pelted down upon it. Memories of plants flirting with pollinators and animals in search of a mate. As the earth is dug from the ground and formulated into something workable for the potter’s hands, it senses its destiny of being transformed once again. Before we even begin we are handling something sacred that has outlived us by millenia and now it is our chance to create beauty that, if cared for, might survive for milenia more.
“In a quite literal way it’s an investment in the future. If you are despondent and despairing and don’t know if there’s a future, why would you invest your energy into fermenting [or clay]? It is quite literally an investment in something that you’re going to be able to enjoy in the future, so there is an intrinsic hopefulness to any practice of fermentation [or potting!]” ~ Sandor Katz
When I turn to my body and allow this question of delayed gratification to percolate I intuit that, in the context of healing, there is simply no other way. And this is also confirmed by experience. I cannot expect to stop eating gluten for a day and all my inflammation dissolves. I cannot have one portion of kimchi and think my gut biome is balanced. I cannot do a tokenistic fast and expect the zing in my cell mitochondria to miraculously return. I cannot delve into one somatic breathwork session and feel freed of my childhood shame. I cannot meditate for ten minutes and build a relationship with the witness conscious. I cannot tone my wandering vagus nerve by humming feebly once in the shower…
In fact, I have come to accept that I also cannot do these things in isolation. My hectic jumping from one thing to the next in grasping quest for a miracle was disconnecting me from my reality and moving me into a constant state of fight or flight. With time I realised that the kindest approach had to become one of joyful dedication. Free of judgement for when I choose to stray off path because it feels too much (as it did these past few weeks). And nurturing a gentle, longing attitude for recalibration when the impulse naturally arrives (rather than cracking that old whip).
I sense that this joyful dedication will likely continue for some time yet, even though there has been much relief from what once was. I have grown comfortable with this delayed gratification. The patience and resilience that I have been forced to develop is greater than that I ever built in tough jobs or travelling alone in far flung places or losing a loved one. It is fuelled by active hope. Caressed with reverence for the body, mind and spirit. Touched by humility and trust.
And, when the moments come where I do notice little shifts - like last weekend when I started bleeding after six whole months of hibernation (thank you seed cycling!) - I am hugely grateful and viscerally aware of the body’s innate capacity to heal. Or rather, in awe of…
As I write, these questions strike me:
How can we get better at acting in the present in service of the future without slipping into living with an ungrounded, futures mindset?
What if we set the intention that each day we will do something small that, at it’s core, is not for our individual and//or immediate benefit?
Happy seed planting, Tash x
* Luckily, I find cooking to be fully immersive; a calming, creative outlet and a rewarding act (thanks Mumma); so - at the ripe age of 32 - I actually have perhaps three memories of ordering in food and let’s just ignore the few hundred Gregg’s Steak Bakes I used to munch!
What’s been sparking my curiosity?
Hearing: the call of groundnesting birds in a flurry of disturbance as we walk too close to their nests along the magical River Cover in the Yorkshire Dales. It strikes me that nature always warns us when we are close to causing harm. We are given a chance to respond, to change course, to listen. Yet how often do we chose to do so?
Seeing: I went to watch ‘Rewilding Scotland’ with Mum in our local seaside town Dunbar. Quite fittingly Dunbar is the birthplace of John Muir who taught us that wild places have an an intrinsic value all of their own. That humankind is a part of nature not dominant over it. Concepts of deep time and delayed gratification are woven throughout the film’s throughline. Barren Scottish moorlands were shown alongside forested Norwegian mountains and a girl’s hope is reignited as she dared to imagine the transformation possible.
Tasting: the gritty, earthy flowers of stinging nettles and imagining them supporting my kidneys as they get digested (make sure not to eat more than one seed-head a day!). The flowers seem fuller this year. I wonder what the nettles are trying to tell us?
Smelling: the sugary sweet streets of Amsterdam with every corner seeming to lure people in with prettified posion. I stop to take a big waft into my system and pay attention to how my body responds. My throat contracts. I feel my vital organs slowing a little. My forehead frowns. If there was a glimmer of temptation to try it quickly disappeared and I wafrnder towards the slither of afternoon sun.
Touching: I haven’t worked with my hands a lot during my European perenigrations but the short moment of planting snapdragons and marigolds throughout Mumma’s vegetable garden sent waves of peace through me. Soil under nails. Worms
Feeling: the rising heat of self-consciousness as I am encouraged to learn and free style Sarah Jarosz’s cover of When Dove’s Cry. I sing it over and over again until I have unexpectedly created my own version; until my whole being smiles from the inside out; until I feel light and excited to actually perform in familiar company! Gotta sing more girlllllll!!
"Allow nature's peace to flow into you as sunshine flows into trees." ~ John Muir
