In the New York Times this morning I read about a NYC program that has planted 13,000 trees in shade-deficient neighborhoods. The plan is to plant 20,000 trees a year until 2026.
Twenty thousand trees—twenty thousand acts of imagination and hope. Twenty thousand actions that required effort and planning—all with the requirement to act, support and be patient for the results. Be patient for the kind of change big enough to create transformation.
“On one block in East New York, a line of trees, planted in 2009, has grown into a canopy. Neighbors gather for cards, dominoes and barbecue. “When they first came, I could touch the tops of the trees,” Jaytee Spurgeon, 55, recalls. “It makes the neighborhood better.”
Planting trees is an entirely different time horizon than we are used to. It takes 10-20 years for many trees to reach a height that has impact that we recognize. And we humans aren’t good at doing something and waiting 10 – 20 years for results. In the world of quarterly reports, ten session treatment plans, and three easy steps to everything—results that don’t happen quickly aren’t considered successful. Even six months is a long time for most imaginations. Recent research by digital.com found that 52% of online shoppers won’t wait 6 seconds for a webpage to load. 6 seconds. It’s no wonder planting trees seems radical.
And if we are usually prone to short-term thinking—the pandemic has made it worse. Trauma changes the way we hold time. Trauma shifts our time horizons to an ever-present past. We organize ourselves to pay attention and protect ourselves from what already happened, and we stop orienting toward a future.
The antidote to this traumatic effect on our experience of time is to intentionally stretch into longer time horizons. We need to imagine and act toward a future. Yes, we need to plant trees—for the environment, for people, for neighborhoods. Actual tree planting is great. But the article stayed with me on my walk this morning because I began to wonder what the ‘trees’ were in my life—and in the lives of the people and organizations I work with. It made me wonder—what are we planting now for something for results or change in 10 – 20 years? And how can we help ourselves and each other have the patience to hold these trees as we wait for the results?
I think sometimes we not only need to plant trees, but we need to recognize the things we are doing that are trees. For example, in my work life organizations often see their projects as ‘initiatives’ and not long-term projects. A colleague and I worked with an organization for 5 years building a cadre of 25 leaders a year who could communicate well, develop their people and see the bigger picture. The organization saw this group in terms of short-term outcomes. Instead of seeing this group as a forest, they saw each leader or maybe the cohort as a lovely field of sunflowers. They didn’t recognize that they had planted 125 trees—that this combined group of alumni of this program was a resource that was bigger than any individual in it, and could support a lot of their other change and strategy work. By not seeing the trees that they planted, they didn’t put the resources in to nurture it or support it, and gradually the forest isn’t as strong.
And sometimes we don’t recognize when we are planting trees that are bigger than our initial acts. We confuse the means with the ends. We begin an exercise program—we walk on a treadmill, or we begin strength training, and as we get stronger we don’t shift our activity to things that we enjoy more or that interest us—we don’t hike more challenging trails, or take up a new sport. So we gradually lose interest in the exercise routine because the exercise program wasn’t the tree, it was the seed: the tree was the more meaningful activity we were trying to get to. When you plant a tree in your life it will keep growing and it will need you to grow with it. This is true for individuals and its true for the organizations I work in too.
So I sit wondering…Where am I thinking in too short a time horizon? Where am I being too impatient for a result? And ‘what will future me be grateful that I planted this year?’
© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD
If you want to watch a wonderful allegorical tale of the vision and patience of planting trees, you can watch The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giorno
Or read the book:
And if you want to support actual tree planting nationally or internationally: