Hi Subscriber First Name,

It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’ll be 44, which sounds like a grown-up age. I’m not sure I feel very grown up though. I suspect I’ll always be something of an experiment in curiosity, learning and emergence, so each annual journey around the sun gives me a chance to reflect on what I’ve learned, witnessed and explored along the way.

So if I was going to summarise this year, I think I’d call it a great remembering.

I was brought up with an awareness of spirituality and deeper thinking but for a long time (through the necessity of having to bring myself up from the age of 17) I fell into the well-trodden corporate path. It provided money when I needed it and gave me what I thought was security but it never felt real. And what I traded for that was a deeper knowing that life could be something much richer and more beautiful than simply working for the man.

I forgot that for quite a long time, until I burned out so significantly that I couldn’t avoid that truth any longer.

Since then (and particularly this year) I’ve been returning to myself. Or perhaps more accurately, returning to something more natural. That’s taken me back towards the land, amazing communities and remembering some of the deeper principles of wisdom, healing and connection.

And I couldn’t write this without acknowledging how much I’ve enjoyed becoming part of what is happening at Four Acre Farm.

Me and my friend Kate (one of the farm founders) have been creating workshops, gatherings, dinners and conversations that have genuinely made my heart sing. A year ago, we hadn’t started any of that and now, looking back, we’ve been rather busy.

One of the things we’ve been talking about recently is the move towards perennial crops to weather the increasingly drought like conditions. Unlike annuals, they don’t need to start again from scratch every year. Their roots go deeper, they adapt to the conditions around them and even when they disappear from view for a while, they can return when the conditions are right.

It got me thinking about whether perhaps we should start thinking of ourselves as perennial too?

What if we saw ourselves as people who grow and evolve over many years, rather than expecting ourselves to constantly reinvent ourselves or reach our full potential as quickly as possible?

There is something comforting about the idea that our growth doesn’t always have to be visible. Sometimes we need to disappear a little, restore ourselves, put down deeper roots and allow something new to emerge in its own time.

And perhaps that’s particularly relevant as we get older? I no longer have to pretend to enjoy things like posh awards ceremonies while I was cosplaying as an ‘adult’. I’m grateful for that part, it’s what I needed at that time and allowed me to survive. But now, I can integrate that experience and be unashamedly me.

My mum died at 49, and as I get closer to that age I find myself thinking about it more. When I was younger, I remember thinking that 49 sounded quite old. I remember thinking that people lose parents so maybe it’s just a little earlier than normal? But it really wasn’t normal and seeing my boys the same age I was when she died has been its own kind of grief for what I faced.

It won’t be many more birthdays until I’ll be older than the age my mum was when she died, which is a strange thought to carry around with me.

I don’t want to turn this into one of those pieces about how we should “make every day count”. There’s truth in that of course but I think there is something more interesting to consider about what we are actually here to be part of and what happens when the person we have been is no longer quite the person we want to become.

My mum was an OG feminist, free-thinking hippy who taught me about people like Carl Jung, so perhaps it’s no surprise that his thinking around the thresholds of life has stayed with me. He suggested that there are moments when we can move beyond the identity we have spent the first part of our lives constructing and begin to ask who we might become next.

Perhaps that is what this year has really been about for me. Not becoming someone entirely new but remembering something that was already there.

That’s also a big part of the work I find myself doing with people now. So often when we’re stuck we think we need to become someone different. A better leader, a more confident person, a different kind of business owner, someone who finally has it all worked out.

But I’m increasingly convinced that meaningful change doesn’t come from ripping everything up and starting again. It comes from understanding what’s already there, finding the roots that matter and creating the conditions for something different to grow.

Upcoming Events

We loved our double whammy of events last week with The Natural Network gathering at Patch and The Longer Table at the farm. We’ve got exciting new things to announce soon but for now, I’ll invite you to this…

The Natural Network at Patch

24th September: 10am - 12pm. Tickets here

Our monthly gathering at Patch, exploring how we work, lead and do business in more sustainable, human and natural ways.

Wrapping up

We can reinvent ourselves at any point in our lives. But perhaps we don’t need to reinvent everything, maybe we just need to remember who we are.

So perhaps the question isn’t - “What do I want to achieve next?. Perhaps it is - “Who was I always meant to be and what parts of myself have I forgotten?”.

I can see now that I was probably always going to become who I am today. I just needed the time, the experience and a few unexpected turns to work it all out.

So, when I’m eating my cake tomorrow, I’ll be thinking about my mum, about the years ahead and about where my own path might be heading.

And (hopefully) nurturing a few more roots along the way that matter to me, my friends, the communities I’m part of and most importantly, my wonderful wife and children.

With compassion and curiosity,

Nick