Easter

Lately, I’ve been seeing various posts about physical or mental exhaustion—recommending that we take breaks, don’t push ourselves, slow down...

Others, on the contrary, push you in the same direction that the first ones try to pull you out of: to pursue personal development, to evolve, to step out of your comfort zone, to become a better version of yourself...

How does the nervous system receive and process this information?

The good news is that there are fragments of truth in both.

The bad news is that, on one hand, you can’t stop unless you understand why you’re rushing, and on the other hand, you can’t start unless you understand why you’re stuck.

The natural truth is that you can’t force evolution, meaning, development, or the way of being in the present moment.

Well, you can, but at the cost of essence, balance, and the unified harmony of life.

Development and evolution are a journey.

After taking each step, we’re still ourselves—just a version enriched with an integrated synthesis of the previous steps.

If you prefer a plant metaphor: a seed that begins to sprout cannot be a seed, and a stem, and a leafy plant with flowers or fruit, all at once.

It needs time, favorable conditions, a buildup of tension that ensures its leap from one state to another, its own personal rhythm, specific to the species, perfectly synchronized with the natural environment in which it grows.

If you try to rush the process, you risk destroying the life that’s just forming.

You can’t force a bud to bloom by pulling on its petals, just like you can’t take a child out of the womb prematurely without serious consequences.

Yes, you can give a plant fertilizer. It may grow faster, taller, seemingly more vigorous.

But at a price: it loses its taste, authentic smell, texture, natural resilience, internal balance, and its symbiotic capacity is reduced.

Fertilizers speed up growth, but the roots don’t get enough time to fully develop, to become firm and dignified.

What’s the use of growing tall if the first storm brings you down?

Animals?

Their growth can also be accelerated in industrial farming.

Chickens grow fast—too fast—for their skeletal and muscular systems to keep up.

That leads to movement issues, deformed legs, or the inability to support themselves.

Internal organs don’t develop proportionally with body mass, which can result in cardio-respiratory failure or internal dysfunctions.

Because of accelerated development, the immune system also doesn’t fully mature, making them more vulnerable to diseases—hence the frequent use of antibiotics, antifungals, nutritional supplements.

Their lifespan is short.

They live briefly and in imbalance.

Basically, they’re raised as “products,” not as living beings.

Humans?

They also use “fertilizers”: competitive pressure, comparison stress, supplements, stimulants, development programs and formulas.

Also at a cost!

In the business world, where “growth mindset,” rapid scaling, and maximum productivity are often glorified, we forget that an organization is a living entity, made of people. And people, like plants and animals, cannot sustain an artificial rhythm indefinitely.

For a mature business, growth is not an endlessly upward line, but a succession of expansion and integration phases, of action and reflection.

Without solid roots—a healthy organizational culture, integrative processes, balanced teams, a shared purpose—any peak reached can become a point of collapse.

So real growth—physical, cognitive, spiritual—whether in plants, animals, or people—is not something to accelerate, glamorize on Instagram, or showcase in a reel...

It happens in silence, with patience, and with the certainty that everything has its right time.

Forced growth may bring size, impressive visuals, hyperbolized muscles, fanciful concepts, and results—but not maturity!

We don’t die, rebirth, evolve, or develop on schedules, protocols, or strategies.

I watched tulips wither with the same admiration as when I saw them bloom.

They spoke in vibrant colors, and now they are silent.

In the month of Eosturmonath, named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre—from which “Easter” comes—when nature is reborn, may we find our personal rhythm.

We enter burnout and need to slow down.

We linger in rust-out (the opposite of burnout) and need to innovate, to bring in meaning, motivation, and movement.

We oscillate between these extreme, situational, or occupational states only when we’ve lost our individual rhythm.

In ”La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie”, Roland Barthes observed:

“The photograph never lies: it is an emanation of the referent (the photographed thing).”

There’s much to say about how we become alienated from our intrinsic human rhythm, from what’s natural—but today, I’ll let the image speak.

P.S. ...being in harmony with your own rhythm is, perhaps, the most radical form of courage!