At this time of year I like to mark an occasion which is on the grand scale, but which you wouldn’t ever notice. About the 12th of December, the sunset is at its earliest for the year. From this day on, the evenings are getting longer, which I think is worth celebrating. The sunrise times will take a few more weeks to turn around, and a few weeks later the lighter afternoons and early plants will really be obvious.
Noticing the turn of the seasons is, for me, the great joy and privilege of living in the country. It makes us feel more part of nature if we share those cycles and moments, and different times of the year might invoke something more personal, like the writer of the poem whose first line I’ve used for the title of this blog*. We may also realise things that we can take into our lives, work and organisations. Biomimetics is the emulation of natural systems to solve human problems, and plenty of biomimetic research is done at the University, in engineering and medicine particularly, but how often do we look to nature for insights into how we might work?
Working in education is a constant reminder of the cycle of years. It’s one of the reasons it can seem slow to change things; prospective students need to know we’ll be here for them in 5 or 6 years’ time. We return from the summer, if we’ve been away, with a great mission of renewal and new starts, just as nature starts to slow down, its job of reproduction and growth largely done for this cycle. Ecosystems slow down to preserve precious resources, and the great recycling (sometimes called decay) is more visible than growth, just when our working year is busiest. January marks the gradual awakening after the midwinter dark, but there’s a view – which I don’t share - that January is depressing and miserable, because the Christmas party is over and more wet and cold months lie ahead.
What about organisations? There are plenty of models that look at them as organisms, and use concepts of genetics to think about how they grow from a set of standard instructions but emerge unique. Ecosystems – dynamic webs of interaction and resource exchange – is an obvious way to think about human systems, but we still tend to design and build organisations with rigid frameworks like a machine or a factory.
What effect do these observations from the more-than-human world have on us? Considering the University and your role in it, what do they make you think? Could it change how you feel, like the poet? What are you curious about? Could they help you be creative?
As the year turns, many of us will settle in for a bit of restoration away from the dark and the storm, treating ourselves with the laid-in supplies, confident that the sun will come back and the land will be plentiful again. Maybe take a moment to sit by the literal or metaphorical fire and ponder how the great cycles and mechanisms of nature might prompt you to think differently next year.
*From "A Vagabond Song” by Bliss Carman
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