What Engagement Reveals: The Resources You Can't See From a Distance

A few months ago I wrote about discovering resilience when a summer storm knocked out our power. But that same storm also took down seven trees in our backyard - and facing that challenge taught me something different about where real strength actually comes from.

We faced a choice about how to respond. We could have left the fallen timber where it lay, avoiding the overwhelming task of cleanup. We could have hired a crew to come in, clear everything efficiently, and restore order. Both options had their appeal - one required nothing from us, the other promised professional results without our effort.

But neither approach felt right. The first meant living with ongoing devastation. The second meant outsourcing the work to someone else's hands and eyes, getting a cleaned-up yard but missing something in the process. So we took a third path: we engaged with it ourselves. Of course, that choice came with its own challenges - time, effort, physical work that pushed me in new ways. But it led to discoveries I never anticipated: seeing my landscape in completely new light, recognizing areas overtaken by invasive plants as spaces that could be reclaimed and transformed rather than left to deteriorate further.

As I've been doing this work, I kept thinking about a documentary I recently watched about Japanese forestry and typhoon protection - because it illuminated the same pattern I was experiencing in my own backyard.

A Different Kind of Strength

In coastal Japan, communities facing typhoons built what seemed obvious: massive concrete seawalls. Engineered barriers that looked impressive and represented modern technological prowess. Surely concrete could protect better than anything nature offered.

But a Japanese botanist named Akira Miyawaki noticed something the engineers had missed. He'd been studying native forests - the kind that had grown in Japan for millennia before development cleared them away. These forests, with their diverse mix of native species planted densely together, developed extensive, interconnected root systems that went deep into the earth. When typhoons hit, something unexpected happened: the forests provided better protection than the concrete walls. The deep roots held soil, absorbed storm surge, and bent with wind rather than resisting rigidly. The concrete walls eventually cracked, eroded, or failed when force exceeded their specifications.

Miyawaki didn't discover this through theory. He discovered it through years of observing forests, understanding how native species work together, noticing what actually happened versus what engineers assumed would happen. His insight came from engagement with the natural world, not from disconnected analysis.

What struck me in both Miyawaki's work and my own backyard cleanup was the same insight:  the cleanup led to far more than just clearing fallen trees. It led to acquainting myself with areas I'd never really "seen" before. Like Miyawaki observing what was already working in those forests, engaging directly with my land revealed resources and possibilities I couldn't see from a distance. The choice to engage rather than avoid or outsource - whether with typhoons or fallen trees - reveals strength we didn't know was available.

This pattern - engagement revealing resources we couldn't see from a distance - extends far beyond backyards and forests. It shapes how we approach every challenge in our lives.

The Pattern in Our Lives

The pattern Miyawaki illuminated is about working with what's native to your situation rather than imposing solutions from elsewhere. It shows up everywhere once you start noticing it. Think about how we approach personal challenges - whether that's struggling with stress, navigating a career transition, or trying to create better habits. Our first instinct is often to reach for what looks like it should work: the bestselling book's five-step system, the productivity method everyone's talking about, the wellness routine that transformed someone else's life. These borrowed solutions come with impressive credentials and success stories. They're the concrete walls - engineered, professional, seemingly solid.

To build strength, build deep roots - not by importing someone else's manufactured solution, but by drawing on your own experience, intuition, and personal wisdom about what works in your actual life.

But here's what happens: they don't quite fit. That perfect morning routine doesn't account for your actual energy patterns or the reality of your household. That career advice assumes a path that doesn't match your specific situation or values. The system that works brilliantly for someone else feels forced when you try to implement it. And when these borrowed approaches fail, we often assume we're the problem - we didn't follow through well enough, we lack discipline, we're not doing it right.

What we're missing is engagement. We're trying to apply solutions without first participating in understanding our own landscape. When we actually engage with our specific challenge - when we pay attention to our own patterns, experiment with what genuinely works for us, discover what's already present in our lives that could serve us - we often find resources we couldn't see from a distance. Not someone else's impressive system, but approaches rooted in our actual circumstances, our real constraints, our genuine strengths. These native solutions might look less polished than the borrowed ones. But like those deep-rooted forests, they hold when the storms come because they're adapted to the actual terrain.

The concrete walls looked stronger - engineered, expensive, built with expertise. But the typhoons revealed what really provided protection: the native forests with their deep, interconnected roots. We face our own storms, and lasting strength comes not from borrowed systems, but from understanding our own terrain well enough to discover what can actually take root there. This requires genuine engagement: actually participating in our lives and challenges, clearing away what doesn't belong, recognizing the resources that were present all along. To build strength, build deep roots - not by importing someone else's manufactured solution, but by drawing on your own experience, intuition, and personal wisdom about what works in your actual life.

What would it take to engage more directly with a challenge you've been

thinking about or planning for from a distance?

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