How looking to nature might help us reimagine ageing – and life – in Australia.
“With a new idea at the heart of how we understand human life, I imagine that many of the areas in which we currently find ourselves stuck might finally be able to shift.”
– Anna Donaldson
I’ve spent many years considering why ageing is such a sticky subject in Australia.
Why is it, I’ve wondered, that we’re so collectively desperate to avoid and deny our own ageing – often from as young as our 20s?
Why do so many older people in our communities feel invisible? Isolated? Unwanted?
Why is our formal care system so chronically challenged, and our capacity to ‘cope’ with an ageing population considered a looming crisis?
Perhaps most importantly, why don’t we seem to be able to change any of it?
Over the past decade, I’ve spoken to thousands of people about ageing in Australia. And although almost nobody thinks things are working especially well, most people seem strangely resigned to it. We might wish things were different. But the energy and imagination needed to drive real change still feels missing.
Two and a half years ago, I set out to understand how we got here – and what it might take to truly shift things for the better. I travelled around Australia (in a caravan, with my husband and two young kids); listening to people from all walks of life, looking for examples of positive change on the ground, and giving myself the space and time to reflect and think deeply about the issues. It was an extraordinary and beautiful journey that helped me experience and see life in a whole new way. And a journey that, ultimately, led me to a new frame for understanding our current state. One through which everything I’d observed and questioned suddenly made sense – and through which a vision of a better future came into much clearer view.
So what is this new frame, and where could it lead us?
The Factory Life
Stepping out of the familiar flow of our busy urban life, one of the first things I noticed was that as we slowed down, worked less, and became more present, my subconscious started to panic. I worried that I wasn’t working hard enough. That I might be professionally dismissed or rejected. That my platform to meaningfully exist in the world might slip away. And as I sat with this discomfort, I started to see with clearer eyes the system I had always been enmeshed in. The Western, industrialised society that is built, fundamentally, around a core organising idea:
That the primary function of humans in society is essentially to be productive.
Like machines in a factory, it struck me that the template for a human life in this culture takes us through a planned process of increasing to peak productivity, before falling into obsolescence and decay. So much of our perceived value to society rises and falls in lockstep with our economic contribution.
Through this frame, we see young people treated as raw materials – inputs to be shaped for maximum productivity. We invest in them accordingly (e.g. through our education models), because we expect this to pay off in the form of well-functioning, productive working adults down the track.
Working-aged adults, then, are expected to function at peak efficiency. ‘What we do’ for work determines much of the substance of our identity and social world – and ‘busyness’ is upheld as an almost non-negotiable expectation. The rest of our life, and our fuller selves, are meant to fit in around work – never interfere with it.
Older adults, finally, become seen as obsolete – treated like outdated machinery, and pushed aside (or ‘retired’!) when they’re no longer economically productive. From this point, they are considered (at best) largely irrelevant, or (at worst) an outright liability.
Unsurprisingly, a culture built on this idea is deeply youth-centric and ageist. And citizens quickly learn to fear ageing. After all, we are constantly shown that when we’ve passed our economic use-by date, our perceived value and relevance to society will quickly fade. We may hope it won’t be so, or convince ourselves that ‘that won’t happen to me’. But the unease persists.
Through this frame, it’s not hard to see why efforts to alleviate ageism have had limited success. Why aged care reforms have been unsatisfying. Why we find it hard to rebuild community-based care and support networks around each other (people don’t have time to care!). Ultimately, the factory mindset is so deeply ingrained that it’s difficult to truly adopt new attitudes, behaviours and models that don’t neatly align with it.
Yet for all its power, it’s hard to imagine that many people would say this obsession with productivity and output is one that fulfills their deepest desires for a good life. Its costs can be felt at every life stage: burnout, disconnection, existential unease, and a constant, all-consuming busy-ness that crowds out meaningful time for care, community, nature and rest.
As this frame settled in my mind, it began to dawn on me that unless we change this fundamental organising idea, efforts to meaningfully shift the culture, systems and experiences of ageing will continue to be slow and piecemeal.
But for such an embedded idea to shift, it’s not enough to know that the current one is flawed. We need a new one to rally around. One that could give rise to the kind of future we really want for ourselves, our children, our planet.
And so it was that, just as I was contemplating and searching for a different idea – a new frame or guiding metaphor to help lead us forward – my family’s journey brought me to a place that seemed to offer up an answer.
The Forest Life
At an estimated 180 million years old, the Daintree Rainforest (Kaba Kada) in northern Queensland is the oldest living tropical rainforest in the world. Walking through it for the first time, I was completely awed by its beauty and vitality. A great sense of peace and calm came over me – a feeling of deep rightness, like the world is, and ultimately will be, okay.
As I learned about the intricate, balanced ways in which the forest has maintained its health and resilience over time, it struck me that maybe this could be the frame around which a transformed human society could grow and flourish.
Because just imagine if, instead of the factory, we approached human life through the frame of the forest.
In a thriving forest, trees of all ages co-exist and contribute to the overall vitality of the ecosystem. Their primary purpose is not to be productive. Their primary purpose, rather, is to be. To develop into their fullest selves. And to contribute to the health of the whole.
Young people, through this frame, would be seen as the seedlings and saplings of our environment – needing to be nurtured and protected by older trees, while being given space and time to grow. They would be recognised as bringing the potential for freshness and renewal, and we would welcome and encourage them to play this role – supporting their creativity and expansive thinking, and hearing and heeding their ideas for a better world.
Middle-aged adults, then, would be understood as akin to mature trees in their prime. In the forest, mature trees provide the most resources and support for the entire ecosystem – just as middle-aged adults do for their families and communities, especially through the provision of nurture and care. Meanwhile, their own inner growth would consciously continue – working ever closer towards the manifestation of their fullest potential self.
Then there are the ancient trees. The older people. Like ancient trees, older people would be seen – not as diminished – but as their fullest and most majestic final expression. In the forest, their deep roots stabilise the soil and prevent erosion. In the same way, the wisdom and experience of elders would be drawn on as a resource to build social cohesion and balance across families and communities.
Beneath it all, a deeply interconnected root system connects trees of every age, enabling resources to flow freely between them. In the same way, human lives modelled on the forest would see knowledge, care and support flowing readily through meaningful connections between generations, in rich communities that understand their deep mutual interdependence. Intergenerational connection would no longer be seen as a ‘nice’, novel thing to do from time to time. It would be understood as a critical prerequisite for a healthy society – as fundamental to our flourishing as the root network is to the forest’s.
In this life, I also imagine that there would be a more innate acceptance of each stage of the journey. It is quite impossible to imagine a mature tree feeling a sense of existential angst at the idea of growing into an ancient tree, or an ancient tree standing in the forest feeling that it had lost all relevance in its surrounds. Even death and decay is welcomed as a vital part of the cycle – feeding energy and nutrients back into the surrounds, and enabling renewal.
Who among us wouldn’t want to feel a similar sense of belonging, presence and peace throughout our lives? Who among us wouldn’t want to be unshackled from the expectations of the factory, and made free to be with life – fully, joyfully, interdependently – from beginning to end?
A new idea, a new reality
Obviously, humans are not trees in a forest. But nor are we machines in a factory. And history has already shown us the power of a core organising idea to quickly shape or reshape the culture and systems of a society.
With a new idea at the heart of how we understand human life, I imagine that many of the areas in which we currently find ourselves stuck might finally be able to shift.
For example, we might see shifts in how we design our lives, homes and workplaces around each other. Ideas like the 4-day work week – or even universal basic income – might gain political traction. Co-housing communities and other housing forms might evolve to reduce the separation between private homes and public space – fostering greater connection and mutual support within neighbourhoods. Informal support networks where we live might grow to complement paid care provision, and the strain on primary carers – so often juggling ageing relatives, children and working lives in isolation – might begin to ease.
We might see adults and older people more actively cultivating wisdom and inner development throughout their lives – enabling them to step into the responsibility of eldership more consciously. In turn, we might see a virtuous cycle building, with older people increasingly valued and respected by other generations in the community.
We might see young people’s mental health and wellbeing improving, as the care and support of trusted older guides helps them navigate the age-old challenges of youth. We might see older people enjoying better physical and mental health well into their oldest ages, and the demand for health and care services reducing, as the known benefits of meaningful connection, purpose and belonging work their magic.
We might see women liberated from the demands of the anti-ageing beauty industry – comfortable with their changing faces, free of social stigma, and released from the financial encumbrance of expensive products and treatments.
We might stop nudging people out of meaningful work and employment when they still have valuable contributions to make – and a desire to do so.
We might see ageist language in the media vanish. And the ageist self-talk that many of us succumb to might also cease.
Perhaps we might even find our way to a culture where each advancing year is welcomed as a gift, rather than greeted with a grimace.
How might we get there?
For many, the prospect of shifting a society’s core organising idea might sound wildly far-fetched. But it’s been done before. And there are already many people and cultures out there who know what it is to live like the forest.
Like Australia’s own First Nations people. For tens of thousands of years, First Nations communities have revered elders at the heart of social life, and recognised their integral role in the health of the community as a whole. Knowledge and wisdom have been shared consciously across generations, connection and relationships have been held paramount, and care has been held as a shared undertaking of the community. There is so much that First Nations can teach, if white Australia is ready to listen – and by walking together, there is such great potential to make things better for us all.
There are also changemakers across the country who have dedicated themselves to bringing forest-like thought and behaviour back into our communities – reconnecting generations, encouraging the sharing of elder wisdom, and offering new models of care and connection. Their programs and initiatives – often small scale and unseen by the mainstream – offer real, practical stepping stones towards a different way of being.
And, of course, there are the individuals who have already found ways to live like the forest in their own personal lives, within and despite the dominant context of the factory. People who can act as role models – showing us what it looks like to embrace a different story of life and ageing, and helping others follow suit.
So as I see it, the ingredients for a groundswell of change are already out there. But right now, without an organising frame in which to place them, many of us will see them as ‘nice’, ‘novel’, or even ‘cute’ examples on the fringe – rather than as the first shoots of a culture we could all get excited about, and that needs our collective attention and support to grow.
Through Good Flock, we’re starting by spreading this new frame and idea. By looking for the seeds and shoots of the forest that are already out there in our communities, and that need support to thrive. By bringing people together to start tending properly to these emerging possibilities. And, like the forest, committing to the long game – knowing that, like the most magnificent forests, this beautiful new world will take a while to grow.
Come grow it with us.
