We can become more resilient
Parish Magazine article September 2024
Biosphere 2 was built in Arizona between 1987 and 1991. It is a completely enclosed ecological system, featuring several biomes and living quarters for people, as well as an agricultural area and workspace for studying the interactions between humans, farming, technology, and the rest of nature. This serves as a kind of laboratory for the study of global ecology.
Its three-acre structure was an experiment to see if a closed ecological system could be designed to support human life. Long-term, it was seen as a precursor to gaining knowledge about using closed biospheres in space colonisation.
It was only used twice for its intended purpose as a closed-system experiment in the early 1990s. Both attempts encountered problems, including low food and oxygen supplies, the deaths of many animals and plants, and tensions among the eight-person crew.
One of the challenges they had was growing trees. The trees planted in the biosphere grew faster than those outside, but they fell over before they matured. It took a while to figure out that the cause of this was the lack of wind in the Biosphere.
In a normal environment, wind stresses the trees, which helps to strengthen their wood and root systems. Without such stress from wind, a tree may grow quickly, but it can’t support itself fully. In other words, the trees needed some stress to become more resilient and thrive in the long run.
Likewise, we all need some stress in life if we’re to become more resilient as we grow and thrive in a world where stress is very much the norm. That’s not to say that we should go chasing stressful situations, there are enough in life that will find us anyway. But if we do all we can to avoid stress for ourselves or our children, then we (or they) can fail to develop the resilience needed to navigate life.
Managing stress, building resilience and improving our wellbeing are all interrelated, and there are several dimensions to consider in our wellbeing. If I want to develop muscle tone in a specific area, I need to stress those muscles —perhaps make them work more than is comfortable — so that they grow stronger. That may improve my physical well-being, but there are other dimensions where I need to develop my well-being if I’m to better manage stress. Those are mental, emotional, relational and spiritual well-being.
By spiritual, I don’t necessarily mean religious; our spiritual wellbeing integrates all the other dimensions into a whole. It involves being connected to something greater than ourselves, which helps provide a framework of values, principles, morals, and beliefs that give a sense of purpose and meaning to life.
We explore all these dimensions of well-being in our Living Well course. And this course is available in person or online from 19th September (details overleaf).
The stresses in our lives aren’t going away; if anything, they are increasing. We can’t eliminate them, but we can all become more resilient and better equipped to cope with the challenges that life presents.
Whether or not you can join us on the course, I pray that we will all find ways to manage stress more effectively, build resilience, and live life to its fullest.
Rev Barry Jackson