(Re)building Connections to Others, Land, and Ourselves

The truth is, the only reality we can affect is our own — the immediate life we live each day. And for us, as humans, through all the great arc of our time on this planet, “reality” has been the sum of our relationships: to each other, to the world around us, and to that ineffable spark of life that innervates each of us. The human need for relationships rises in us and feeds us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Yet modern life has a way of eating away at the relationships that support us. As we become more interconnected in the digital world, we seem to lose connections in the physical world; our social and emotional bonds become more fragmented, and we lose touch with our neighbors and community. As we move away from the land, we neglect the ecological and agricultural systems that feed and shelter us, and those systems become more tenuous. As we begin to take for granted the energy, transportation, and distribution networks that support us, our understanding of these systems diminishes, and we begin to lose our sense of place as citizens and caretakers of a global world.

In this time of disconnect — of peak oil, climate chaos, population explosion, energy crisis, water shortages, mass extinctions, societal disruption — many people are wondering how to get from where we are to where we need to be in order to survive and thrive on this planet. The answer, I think, lies in building relationships. If we can build — or rebuild — connections to each other, to the land, and to the systems that support us, we can, perhaps, contribute to a growing worldwide web of interrelationships. That network, in turn, can become the foundation for a self-sustaining community that interweaves human endeavor with natural systems to support a resilient, prosperous future for all.

(From The Permaculture Promise by Jono Neiger)