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Abundance isn’t the cure, gardening is.

Abundance is a pharmaceutical treatment for a chronic problem, the problem being total unwillingness to live in the state of pursuit. The unresolved nature of pursuit drives us crazy. We believe we should get what we want, and so we built a society around satiating impulses instantly.

Young Japanese maple saplings in terracotta pots on a sunny windowsill

Abundance is an opioid prescription. It gives us temporary relief from want while in turn, raising our expectation of instant gratification, making us even less patient, making the tension state of unfulfilled desire even more agonizing.

In the garden, there is no starting or finishing, there is only becoming. Each phase becomes the next one, not on a particular day, or in a particular instant, but continuously. The tomatoes we harvest do not simply appear. They may be redder today than they were yesterday, and they may have been bigger yesterday than they were the day prior, but there was no single moment where they appeared, no single moment in which they became ready to eat, no single moment in which the plant is born or dies. To love a garden is to find fulfillment in an unending process.

My dad took me to nurseries as a kid, and I always used to think about the years the trees had to spend growing before they were ready to sell at a store. I wondered how it was possible to run a business selling something that took five or more years to produce. How did they get started? How could they have known five years ago about the nursery they’d want to start today? And what might I want to do five years from now?

We need to reset our clocks. Set them to garden time. Forget about achievement. Focus only on becoming. The more process we set in motion, the more life we bring into being, the greater our optionality. These things cannot be purchased with money—only time. You may not have inherited many of them, but they are the most valuable thing you can pass on.

Generational whiskey makers in Kentucky get it.

Generational loggers in Japan get it.

The guy who let me collect the seeds from his maple tree got it.