I took this picture yesterday
(note the dead leaves and spent blossoms on the ground)
Where I live, this is about the last of the crocuses - we have moved on to daffodils. But crocuses matter a little extra to me because of their resilience. Not that their blooms are big or last a long time, but because they come back, year after year, undeterred by bad winters or swampy springs or late freezes.
They persist, even when their persisting seems improbable. And in the era that’s unfolding now, in volatility and confusion and upset of our deeply held assumptions about work and communities, persistence is becoming one of the most important traits that our places, our organizations - and ourselves - can manifest.
So this seemed like a good time to reshare this piece from The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived: What’s Changed and How You Can Help. You can learn more and purchase here, here or here.
Perhaps we can work on cultivating our inner crocus, even when the natural ones have faded.
Growing up in the Cleveland snow belt, plants weren’t much on my radar… except for that first crocus of the year.
It came up at a time when spring was still imaginary and the black crust along the roadways made you think more of something dead than something coming back to life. Despite blizzards, despite ice, despite unending leaden grey skies, that impossible little patch of color came back year after year.
There is something audacious, even ridiculous about a crocus. Tiny, flimsy little thing with its blossom too big for its stem, pushing in when larger and prettier plants won’t grow, and taking on the same battle year after year.
Crocuses: nuts.
___
What do we want for the communities and organizations that we care about - and for ourselves? It’s fair to say that we want them to be healthy – to thrive and succeed for the long term. No one goes into this work wanting to make short-term wins that will set us up for disaster down the road. And even with our best efforts, we know that blizzards and long stretches of black snow will probably show up in the future.
What we really want, then, is to build resiliency – to equip all of us to bounce back from setbacks. We want our communities to overcome lost businesses and political fights and bad development. We want our organizations to thrive despite bad luck and the inevitable bad decisions. And we want all of them - and us - to continue to build great places for people to live and work and all that other stuff we talk about.
But here’s the kicker: resilient isn’t flashy. Resilient usually isn’t dinner-plate-sized blossoms, neon colors, explosive growth, front-page news.
Resilience requires careful attention to issues like business mix and diversity, places for many different kinds of people to work and live, plentiful options for getting around, sound and inclusive decision-making processes and system that allow people to bring all of their creativity to the process. Resilience requires strategies and systems that mitigate the risks, lowering the odds of a catastrophic blow.
___
About the time I became aware of the crocuses, the economy where I grew up was falling apart. We in the Rust Belt had learned to depend on a few industries, a few leaders, a few simple assumptions about the world, and we concluded that things would go on that way forever. And my family’s business did that, too.
They didn’t.
Cleveland today is a different place than it was in 1980 – better in some ways, more challenged in a lot of others, but on many measures, a place facing much harder times than it used to. If we’d had our eyes open, if we would have lessened our dependence on those few industries, leaders and assumptions, maybe things would have been different. Maybe the business wouldn’t have died. Maybe the community wouldn’t have struggled so hard. Maybe, at least, we could have weathered the blizzard better.
A resilient community might not make a Million Places to See Before You Die list. It might not feature the showplace blossoms or the tallest stems, and it might look pathetic on your dining room table. But if what you really want is a place that lasts, a place that people will care about and care for through generations…if you want your community to be able to bloom again after the winter…perhaps we should take a closer look at that crocus.
Maybe it’s on to something.