📮 Chloro-Com’ (EN) #8 — Changing Without Losing Yourself
When the living world teaches us a different way to move.
🌍 Disponible en : (FR) Version Française
This morning, I caught my Chlorophytum… moving house again.
Without shifting an inch, it had slid a little closer to the edge of its shelf.
As if it were about to jump.
In reality, it was simply looking for a bit more light
(…proof that I’m still a decent roommate 😇).
And I think we all do the same thing at the beginning of a new year:
we move without announcing it, we reorient ourselves without breaking everything,
we lean gently toward what truly answers us.
In this letter, I want to show you how to draw inspiration from this vegetal movement —
how to change without betraying yourself —
and why it’s far more powerful than any action plan.
Watching my Chlorophytum pivot once again, I was reminded of something:
in the living world, change never starts with a sharp turn.
It begins with a shift in allure.
When the living changes its pace
Instead of explaining how plasticity works
(I already went deep into the mechanics in a Chlorophyll Capsule — I’ll add the link below),
I’d like to take you into what it feels like.
Plasticity, in the living world, isn’t a process.
It’s an atmosphere.
It’s that nearly imperceptible moment when a plant lets go of a direction that no longer responds.
Not because it “decided” something else…
but because another spot speaks to it more clearly.
It doesn’t fight.
It listens.
Plasticity is that quiet gesture:
→ when a root speeds up into a path it couldn’t sense an hour earlier
→ when a bud chooses to wait instead of opening
→ when a branch gives up direct light to gently bypass an obstacle
→ when a tree accepts a little asymmetry so it can remain standing
In the living world, adjustment is never spectacular.
It is organic.
It fits perfectly with what is possible.
And above all: it never requires becoming someone else.
A plant doesn’t lose its nature when it pivots.
It simply becomes more accurate.
What it teaches us
🌱 — You can change your angle without changing your story.
A plant doesn’t renounce itself when it pivots — it repositions.
It seeks a trajectory that responds better, without abandoning what it is.
We’re the same: sometimes it’s not the destination that needs revisiting… just the posture.
🌱 — The right direction is never an idea. It is a response from the real.
The living doesn’t “choose.”
It listens.
It moves where something circulates, where the soil speaks, where the light calls.
We do the same when we stop forcing — what responds becomes the compass.
🌱 — Lasting transformations are born from tiny variations.
In plants, nothing flips overnight.
A stem corrects by one degree,
a root bends a few millimetres,
a bud waits one more day.
And yet, in the end, the whole shape has changed.
The movement is tiny… but the effect is immense.
Practical application: The “Angle Pruning” (5 minutes)
Pick a task that has been resisting you for two weeks.
Not an Everest. A bramble.
Now look at it differently:
→ What if you changed only the angle?
→ The moment?
→ The duration?
→ The format?
→ The order?
Choose one micro-variation.
Test it today or tomorrow.
A plant doesn’t push through.
It pivots.
Under the canopy — What is budding here
These past few days, something unexpected has been happening here, on Substack.
Nothing planned.
Nothing engineered.
Just… a new kind of circulation.
A living thread opened itself:
“When the living connects us.”
Words left gently.
Images imagined.
Honest returns.
Shared intuitions.
People recognizing one another… even without knowing each other.
I wasn’t expecting that response.
And yet it came — immediate, clear, vibrant.
As if something had been trying to grow for a long time.
I don’t want to force what this should become.
I’d rather listen.
See what the living world is asking for.
Let the links weave themselves slowly, at the right pace.
One thing is certain: a seed has germinated.
And I’m grateful that some of you chose to leave a breath of your own there.
I don’t want to set anything in stone too quickly.
But I can feel that this thread is more than a simple conversation.
Something is looking for its shape:
perhaps a series,
perhaps a shared space,
perhaps an organ still invisible, slowly forming beneath the surface.
I don’t know yet what name it will carry, nor what direction it will take.
But I do know this: this movement will not remain without a next step.
I’ll listen to it, accompany it, and share whatever emerges — at the rhythm of the living.
If you want to feel what’s circulating right now, the thread is here:
Nothing expected.
Nothing mandatory.
Just a place where the living circulates differently.
And if something is meant to take form, you’ll see it appear here — naturally, like everything else.
The Vegetal Pause
To go further into plant plasticity, here’s a short and accessible resource:
Plasticity: the subtle art of changing without losing yourself (with a few secrets plants don’t often reveal)
And for you:
Where in your life or work do you most need plasticity right now?
You can reply directly under this letter —
I truly love reading your words 😊
**
PS : If you’ve seen this survey a few times already… that’s normal.
It behaves exactly like plants do: adjusting, hesitating, looking for its optimal exposure.
So I’m letting it live a little longer — it will eventually show us where it wants to grow.
Thank you for walking through this letter.
Thank you for being here, truly.
Thank you for being part — in your own way — of the living current that moves through this place.
—
See you in two weeks… or perhaps a bit earlier,
if something asks to sprout. 🌱
—
Franz
Let the essential circulate.