As a designer, I’m often amazed at how vehemently creatives push back on constraints. In not having enough time, enough resources, enough information, enough whatever, I’ve seen teams scream and howl about how the project is doomed to mediocrity imposed by the straight-jacket of harsh limitations. They are the harbinger of a sad team at a drunken happy hour pondering what could have been.
In my career, constraints have often been tough medicine. They serve as an important catalyst for institutional change and fresh thinking, but require a cocktail of resilience and optimism to transform into personal and organizational growth. That can be a nebulous ask. It wasn’t until this March I found an adequate metaphor for what this looks like.
Little Green Giant
In early March after a particularly long, Winter day, I gathered up the raw materials to make a terrarium for my living room. The intention was simple: provide some indoor greenery as I bided my time until Washington D.C.’s glorious spring time. I layered on the pebbles, spaghgnum moss, soil, and then nestled a few baby plants into their a sealable, hinged jar.
To be honest, I didn’t expect to receive much joy from the enclosure. After all, what made it any different than the bushes I’d pass on my walk to work or the potted flowers I spotted in windows of coffee shops on Pennsylvania Avenue? My primary fear was keeping the plants alive - after all, I was going to seal ‘er up and hope they didn’t die.
The Meek Shall Inherit
Every few days I would sit at the window sill and admire the gang's progress. Stems would grow into the glass sides, only to then fan out in all directions like sparklers on the fourth of July. As I rotated the jar every few days, the plants bobbed and weaved into one another to stretch toward the most direct sunlight, filling out any remaining negative space. Roots burrowed through each layer into the next, wrapping the entire ecosystem in a big, whispy hug.
I was surprised how enjoyable the entire process became - every week had its own new saga. “Oh, looks like they’ve run out of space trying to grow out of the top, where will the branches head to now?” “Uh oh, those two are fighting for the leftover room in the corner - who’s going to get there first?” “Oof - got some dead leaves coming in… where do leaves go when they die?” “Is that a bug in the moss? How did he get in there? This jar is air tight!"
While maybe a little unsettling that a man got so much joy out of a few plants in a jar, I was captivated. It was a slow motion drama with new twists and turns every few days.
Fight for your right
What I came to realize is that the terrarium was the ultimate test of constraints. With limited space, the plants had to grow in creative patterns that otherwise would have never been introduced in an open pot. With limited water, I would come home some days to see the sides had fogged up - a sign of water evaporating and condensing to recycle itself. The jar had a rubber lining keeping air from getting out or getting in, so the plant was creating all of its own oxygen and carbon dioxide. Really the only resource given in excess was sunlight, and cloudy, winter days even put that luxury to the test.
In the end, the terrarium has been a great object lesson for my own creative process. In a world where we ask for more and more, we often forget what it means to work with less and less. Excess often leads to waste, lethargy, and stagnation. It’s when we embrace the proverbial box in which we’re bounded that we learn to master that environment in beautiful and unexpected ways.
Thus as I saw the terrarium grow and even thrive, I often would ask myself what was my excuse? We all have limitations, whether it be hours in the day, funds in the bank, skills in our head, or people in our network. Perhaps, just like the terrarium, it is the confluence of these hard stops that force us into something better than otherwise could have never been imagined. It’s a matter of perspective and of resilience, and it’s a view point that I internalized from the unlikeliest of places.
Cheers to you, little guy.
