I was watching a bookshop talk from Walter Isaacson on his da Vinci research where he mentioned the idea that there are no straight lines in nature.
This was really interesting to me, and if true, the first question that came to mind was, "If we live in a nonlinear world why do we insist on building linear systems?"
Most of my life has been shaped by the idea of straight lines. But nature doesn’t work that way. And neither do I.
We say learning is linear.
We say success is linear.
We say healing is linear.
But it’s not.
What actually happens looks more like this:
You learn something.
You forget it.
You come back to it later.
You see it differently.
You actually get it.
You lose it again.
You apply it two years later when you actually need it.
That’s not a straight line.
That’s something else.
That's squiggly,
and wavy,
and loopy.
I see learning more like a corkscrew.
It moves up in spirals.
You come back to the same spot,
but from a different angle.
And the weird thing here.
There are no straight lines in nature.
Literally.
- Fractals. Trees, rivers, blood vessels, lightning—all built from irregular, repeating patterns.
- Einstein’s relativity. Space is geodesic—a path that bends with gravity. (Even light curves.
- Quantum physics. Particles vibrate, twitch, and leap. They don’t travel in neat lines.
- Biology. Nothing grows in a line. Not your bones. Not your muscles. Not your brain. Things grow with resistance. They grow around. They adapt. They spiral.
So yeah—da Vinci had a point.
Then look at the world we’ve built.
Everything around us runs on straight lines.
Time. Education. Careers. Systems. Expectations.
We made up the idea of “forward.”
We invented seven-day weeks.
We broke days into hours and quarters.
We told kids to move through school grade by grade with no space to loop back.
We built workplaces like assembly lines.
And if you’re not constantly levelling up, you’re considered behind.
If you've read any of my other posts you know where I stand on this one — I feel like the system itself is the thing that’s behind.
We’re not machines.
We’re not built for constant output or forward motion.
We’re messy. Emotional. Rhythmic. Reactive.
We move in seasons. In energy swings. In spirals.
But the system isn’t built for that.
It’s built for measurement.
For efficiency.
For predictability.
So if you don’t fit the system, the system says you’re the problem.
Zero way I buy that.
Jean Piaget has a cool quote, “To understand is to invent.”
And I think about that all the time.
(Read To Understand Is to Invent if you get the chance!)
If we want to actually understand people—how we grow, how we learn, how we heal—we have to start inventing systems that reflect that reality.
Systems that allow for loops.
That revisit things without shame.
That expect spirals, not ladders.
Spiralled models of learning.
Cyclical models of work.
Time structures that match our energy, not numbers on a clock.
Space to be neurodivergent, emotionally complex, and still respected.
There are no straight lines in nature but we’ve built almost everything on the assumption that there are. And I think it's cost us.
I don’t want to fit into straight lines anymore.
I want to live and learn with nature.