Thich Nat Hahn has written, “If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past, but you are still grounded in the present moment.”
That seems like a fine, level-headed sentiment, but it’s very abstract. Ironically, it doesn’t feel grounded in anything in particular.
The Buddhist monk also urges his followers to “walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”
Now that’s something I can understand.
Buddhist protestations about the need for detachment aside, to feel grounded is to feel attached, not by imprisoning chains, but with a feeling of confident affiliation. Grounded people aren’t up in the air, loose and above it all. They know where they stand. They feel the earth under their feet, and gain strength from it, either literally or metaphorically.
Being grounded is an emotion of the garden, a place that demands our presence. Gardening can’t be done remotely. It requires that we pay attention to what is around us in the here and now.
In this week’s episode of the podcast This Human Business, innovation specialist Francine Stevens notes the way that gardens and forests bring us into observation of the life around us:
“It is actually a community of organisms, and really what makes a forest successful is the foundations that sit underneath that. For me, having that space in the forest is also taking the time to breathe, taking the time to just be present in the here and now… What’s going on around me? What’s really going on around me? How are the seasons influencing what’s going on around me? What are the animals doing? There’s so much that’s happening in the present here and now that we tend to cut out of our daily lives, and also in business. Taking the time to be present and have that time to think and head space I think allows space for other ideas to come in. It allows for different approaches and concepts to be thought through.”
Francine’s awareness of the foundations of the natural space that she enters is an essential part of the emotion of feeling grounded. The ground is the base level of the reality that keeps us solid. It also reminds us of the larger reality of our existence: Our bodies are fed from the soil, but it is made from the bodies of other living beings that have died, and we will eventually join them back in the earth.
The world of work forged in economic abstractions and digital transcendence can easily strip us of any grounded experience. When author and leadership coach Christine Locher was confronted by an abstracted workplace that banned any botanical presence, she found her own way back to the earth.
“I was working in another office that was very designy, and apparently the fact that there weren’t, the way that the rooms were laid out were part of the protected design. So you weren’t allowed to bring any flowers in, which obviously I ignored because I mean, seriously. So I remember each Monday morning smuggling a single flower past the guy at reception and then sort of half hiding it behind my big screen in case some official person came by.
I wasn’t particularly happy in that office, and I remember what I did to remedy that. I did have a little bit of a garden where I was living at the time, and I also had, I was living on the first floor and I remember very often when I came home from work especially when it wasn’t in the middle of summer, I actually had a big bag of potting soil in my room and I would stick my naked feet into the bag of potting soil just to literally ground myself, because it just felt, I don’t know, like I needed something.”
