What Plants Can Teach Us About Living Creatively?

Last Friday we had an amazing and inspiring event with our own team member, delightful Becky Burton. This was the last event of the year and it couldn’t have been better! She shared with us many thoughts and learnings she has gathered from plants and nature and what they can teach about creativity.

For many years, E. O. Wilson, one of the greatest conservationists of our era, has been a source of inspiration on nature and sustainability, in Becky’s world. In his book “Half Earth”, he proposes that if we can protect 50% of our planet’s land and water, most of the species can proceed to exist - including us. Becky works toward this greater aim in her own way, and has focused for over ten years on working to improve practices in the mining industry.

Additionally, it was E. O. Wilson who first named the concept of biophilia, which means that there is something deep in our DNA that connects us with nature. Feeling this deeply inside her, and as a way to unite several projects related to nature and plants, Becky recently launched a project named Green Elbows.The idea is: “Let us be humans… with plants”. Here, she manages all the green parts of her life as a service to us all: she helps turn a space greener, such as a room or a balcony; she is building a community garden called Garden Lab in Ericeira, where different methods will be experienced through a yearlong project; and she shares green inspiration on Instagram, hoping to foster a connection of the community (and the humankind!) to nature.

More importantly,  the higher and deeper insights Becky brought us in this Friday morning were about plants and creativity!

Lesson number one: Plants teach us to find calm! Becky shared the idea of singing plants, in where sensors measure conductivity of the plant, forming a wave. This wave is then put to music, as if the plants could actually sing. One interesting discovery she shared with us was that these researchers found out that the plant’s song would change if it was moved from place to place. Another interesting observation was that when certain people were around the plant, it changed the wave the plant emitted. The researchers discovered these people were Reiki therapists, biologists of florists, all individuals with a huge connection with nature!

Becky then connected this to her personal experience: Born in Utah (USA), Becky lived in New York City for about eight years before coming to Portugal. While she absolutely loved living in the Big Apple for the first several years, it began to drain her over time and she was no longer feeling the joy of living there. So, Becky started to give back to the city by offering gifts all around the city. This giving back project brought her together with NYC once more, with peace and calm. She shared all the experience in a book she wrote some years ago called: The Audacious Magpie. She shared how she never would have written it if she hadn’t first found calm in the chaos and allowed her own voice to shine through.

Lesson number two: Consistency! This insight was based on giant plants, those ones that grow to enormous proportions. There were two lessons here. The first is that if we consistently show up every day to create, we can create something big over time. The second was that we also need to have tender discipline along with consistency. If we are finding it difficult to show up, we need to ask: Is this due to fear and procrastination? Or is this happening because I’ve outgrown the project. While it can be good that plants continue to grow, it can also sometimes be the case that they deplete the soil in doing so. If a project is more depleting than fulfilling, we should be gentle with ourselves and release it.

In Becky’s experience, she shared that during some years of travelling all over the world she started a project named 1 to 100. She asked the same question to 100 people of all ages, one at each year of age: “What do you love about being alive?” She talked to people all around the world and met amazing individuals. Consistency was the key for this project to persevere. However, there was also tender discipline. She decided to end the project early – with the last spotlight being on a 63-year-old – when she needed to return from her travels to be at home. She understands it was simply the time to stop, rather than to force it. . “When something is not serving you anymore, it’s ok to let it go”, she said.

Lesson number three: Consumption! This insight came from the mining plants, which are a certain species of  trees which draw minerals up from the ground through their sap. Part of the tree can then be processed into usable metals, such as nickel. . In other words, the trees consume what is around them and this leads to how consumption is important for creativity! It’s important to ask: What voices do you have coming into your mind? What are you surrounding yourself with? Becky sees how this is important to stimulate her creativity by listening to podcasts, surround herself with a creative community, read certain books and so on. Our consumption has a direct connection to our creativity and creative process.

Becky took us on a creative journey through her personal and creative experiences inspired by plants and how we can learn so much from nature. Becky believes that we need to allow some of the love we have to give to fall on nature. To her, plants are a source of joy and their pace helps us to not get so frenetic about life. We definitely have so much to learn from them and from Becky. We are so grateful for her, too. Her calm, her energy, her insights and her creative mind makes us fortunate to participate in this event, to listen to her voice and, most of all, to have the opportunity to share our lives with her! Thank you Becky for your beautiful (and green) heart! CreativeMornings Lisbon is really lucky to have you! What a way to end this year!

Text by Ana Sousa

Photos by  Irina Konova and Sónia Ramalho