Why?

Many paths. It is in no doubt that our current habits are unsustainable and we cannot continue along the same path, living the same lifestyles. This is due to our systems, not any one individual, and it is hard to change – but not impossible. Many say that we are in a crisis of imagination – it feels easier to imagine continuing current patterns than changing to live better. We’re treating the symptoms, not the cause. There are multiple potential paths ahead of us. When systems are changing, we can either look away or start building what comes next. Some communities are already reimagining how we live, work and care for land and ourselves.

Interdependence. Our food, clothes, shelter, economies, wellbeing all depend on services provided by healthy ecosystems – i.e. the biodiversity, relationships and cycles of nature. This relationship goes two ways – our activities impact upon nature and have led us to an existential crisis. Our rivers are polluted, rare chalk streams are dying, wildlife is disappearing. We’ve built systems based on extraction. See the pressures facing the Anglian region on our Where page.

Imagined separation. We have stopped truly seeing the nature around us and how we sit within the past, present and future. We perceive ourselves as separate from the rest of nature. Our entire legal and economic system treats nature as stuff we own – resources to extract, property to develop, assets to trade. Global supply chains disconnected us from the sources and true costs of what we consume. We see other humans through a distorted lens – ‘othering’ each other as separate instead of seeing what we all have in common. This isn’t our fault – it’s how we’ve been taught to see the world for centuries. This worldview was violently imposed on people around the world and became the norm. We forget that our ancestors in all lands lived in balance and dialogue with nature, that the land isn’t something you own, it’s something you belong to (see Separation Story).

The dominant worldview harms us. Workers become ‘resources’, relationships become transactional, we see differences as defects. We internalise extraction: pushing ourselves past limits, seeing our emotions as weaknesses, treating our needs as inefficiencies and measuring our worth by productivity. Imposter syndrome, anxiety, burnout – these are symptoms of treating ourselves the way we’ve been taught to treat nature.

Our teacher. Nature shows us another way: cycles instead of straight lines, adaptation instead of control, collaboration instead of competition, regeneration instead of depletion. These patterns work – they’ve sustained life for billions of years. What if we organised our lives, our economies, our minds and communities to work more like healthy ecosystems?

Seeing differently to live differently. When we drive, our hands and the steering wheel unconsciously follow our gaze; we drift toward whatever we look at. When we visualise, our bodies respond. What we picture in the mind’s eye quietly programmes the way we stand, steer and step. If we cannot see the reality of our interconnectedness with nature and treat it accordingly, we cannot change our path towards a better future. We need to change the mindset to change the outcomes – you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

Healing our relationship with nature isn’t just about changing external systems, it means healing our relationships with each other and ourselves too. It’s about unlearning internal patterns we’ve absorbed. Recognising that the parts of ourselves we’ve learned to criticise or hide might actually be adaptations, gifts, or simply natural variations like biodiversity. Learning to treat ourselves with the same care and reciprocity we’re trying to restore with the land.

↠ See Activities

Photos by J. Ramos – Reeds at Wicken Fen; beech trees at National Trust Anglesey Abbey.

ReAnglia CIC (Company No. 17185336)