Living Simply - Lessons from Moss

In a 2022 edition of Emergence Magazine (Ancient Green), Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote about Moss, Climate and Deep Time. Her wisdom and insight really moves me. Here are some excerpts from that article - I hope you, too will find inspiration and meaning in her words:

"If success is measured by widespread distribution, [mosses] occupy every continent, from the tropics to Antarctica, and live in nearly every habitat, from desert to rainforest. If success is measured by expanse, consider the vast peatlands of the north, blanketed by sphagnum moss. If success is colonization of new places, mosses are the first to occupy new places after an eruption or a forest fire or a nuclear meltdown. If creativity and adaptation are the metrics, mosses have diversified to fill every niche, generating more than eleven thousand uniquely adapted species, an outpouring of biodiversity. If success lies in beauty—well—just look."

"We humans pride ourselves on living by the rule of law, but the laws we choose to obey are only those of our own making. We ignore ecological laws as if the fiction of human exceptionalism meant that thermodynamics did not apply to us. Whether we choose to heed them or not, natural laws will prevail. Arrogance has brought us to the brink. The laws of nature will bring us to our knees. And then perhaps we will see the mosses."

"We’d do well to remember that the dinosaurs were big too. Living small is not a sign of weakness or complacency. Rather, it is the surpassing strength of self-restraint, to live simply so that others might simply live."

What an amazingly simple outlook this is, yet to adopt it is to transform our entire way of being in the world.