A Story of Reconciliation
For much of my career, I’ve written and spoken about the inevitable transformation of our monetary systems toward a regenerative dimension — through regenerative finance, systemic design, and structures that align with the cycles of life. My approach has often been technical, supported by facts, grounded in two decades of financial experience and another decade immersed in regenerative design and systems thinking. But as I sit with the challenges of our times, I find myself drawn to a different way of telling this story — one that isn’t just about systems and logic, but about the heart.
This shift has come from a new dimension of understanding, shaped by my time at the Zen Monastery in Plum Village, by lessons I’ve learned in the Amazon, and by the profound wisdom shared by indigenous traditions across the Americas. These experiences taught me something my technical expertise never could:
that reconciliation with nature is not just an intellectual or economic challenge — it is a deeply personal and spiritual journey.
And so, I write this story not from a place of mastery, but from a place of vulnerability and fragility. It is a story of waking up — not just to the challenges of our times, but to the profound interconnectedness and love that can guide us toward a new way of being.
It begins with a river.
The river starts high in the mountains, fed by rain that falls from clouds formed by the vapor of the ocean’s evaporation, where cold currents meet warm shores, by streams trickling from melting glaciers, and by the vast lake that holds it all together.
The river flows downhill, carving its way through the land. It feeds crops, fills reservoirs, powers cities, and sustains life. It becomes essential. And as it journeys, humanity — like the river — tells itself a story.
It’s a story about control. We build dams to harness its power, ports to expand its potential, bridges to cross its divides. We engineer the shores, regulate the flow, extract its resources, and call this “progress.” Over time, settlements flourish along the riverbanks — towns that grow into cities, fueled by the river’s abundance. But there’s a cost.
In the process of building these settlements, humanity forgets something critical. The river’s abundance isn’t infinite. The forest that surrounds it, which attracts the rain and cools the land, begins to disappear.
And with it, the flying rivers of water vapor — created by the rainforest trees, carrying rain across vast distances — begin to dry up.
We deforest the rainforest to make room for fields and factories, reducing the inflow of flying rivers and rain into the land and ocean. Without trees to capture water, fewer clouds rise. Without clouds, fewer rains fall. And so, the river that once nourished life begins to falter.
The forest wasn’t just a backdrop to the river’s story — it was its source. It powered the water cycle, releasing moisture from the trees into the air to form “flying rivers” of vapor. These clouds traveled across the skies, turning into rain as they encountered the cold currents of the ocean. But without these airborne rivers replenishing the clouds, the delicate balance of rain begins to collapse. The once resilient and abundant system falters, as the vital connections between the forest, the rain, the rivers, and the ocean slowly unravel.
By cutting down the forest, we interrupted the river’s lifeline. The settlements that depended on the river began to drain its vitality, even as they thrived on its power.
Now, the river is reaching the ocean, and something strange happens. It resists. The river, shaped by its journey, sees itself as separate, as something unique and self-contained. But as it collides with the vastness of the ocean, it begins to churn. The river doesn’t understand what’s happening at first, but it starts to awaken.
It begins to remember. It remembers that it is not just a river. It is water, just as the ocean is water, just as the rain and the clouds are water. It remembers that the lake in the mountains — the fountain of its water, the one it thought infinite — is drying.
It remembers that the rains no longer fall as they once did, that the forest — once the great engine pulling moisture from the skies — has vanished, and that the ocean, once a dependable source of renewal, can no longer sustain the endless demands placed upon it. And in this realization, it begins to reconcile.
This is where humanity stands today.
For centuries, we believed in the story of separation. We believed we could master nature, control it, dominate it, and live apart from it. We built systems — economic, political, technological — that rewarded us for extracting, exploiting, and consuming. We pursued endless growth and measured our success by how much we could take from the natural world.
But now, the damage is clear. The lake is drying. The rains are failing. The forests are shrinking. The systems we built are breaking under the weight of their own unsustainability. And like the river meeting the ocean, we are being forced to confront the truth we have long resisted: we are not separate from nature.
We are nature.
This is a story of reconciliation. It is a story about remembering where we came from, about recognizing that the systems we have built cannot continue on their current path. It is about acknowledging that the value of nature is not infinite, nor external — it is intrinsic, inseparable from our survival.
And this reconciliation is inevitable. The river cannot refuse the ocean.
As we confront the realities of climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapse, we are waking up to a new understanding of what progress means. We are beginning to see that thriving as a species cannot come at the expense of the natural systems that sustain us. We are starting to value nature — not as a commodity, but as the foundation of life itself.
This awakening is being shaped by a fusion of ancient wisdom and modern understanding. Teachings, like those of Thich Nhat Hanh, remind us of the concept of interbeing: that we are not separate from the world around us but deeply interconnected with it. Systems theory, regenerative economics, and living systems design are showing us how to move beyond extraction and into regeneration.
The tools are already here. We can develop Living Capital that makes protecting nature an economic priority. We can redesign our systems to reward restoration instead of destruction. We can rethink growth not as an endless accumulation of resources but as a balance that aligns with the cycles of life.
But more than anything, we need to change our story. We need to see ourselves not as masters of the river but as part of the ocean.
This is not just a story of collapse. It is a story of possibility. The river, when it reaches the ocean, doesn’t end. It becomes part of something larger, something more abundant, something that nourishes the whole. Humanity, too, has the opportunity to reconcile with nature and, in doing so, find a new way forward.
Let us remember that the ocean has always been there, waiting for us. It is vast, abundant, and unconditional in its invitation. All we have to do is return.
