Planted for later

A farmer in Al Ahsa is planting young date palms this winter, offshoots cut from older trees. They will not give a proper harvest for years. Some of the trees he is putting in the ground will be at their best when his grandchildren are grown.

Almost everything else around him moves the other way. Groceries arrive within the hour. Messages are answered before the kettle boils. A parcel that takes three days feels like a complaint waiting to be written. Speed has become the default test of whether something is any good, and most of the time we accept that without noticing.

So choosing slowness is not the absence of effort. It is a decision, and a harder one than it looks. It means starting something whose reward will not come this season or this year. It means tending it on the days when nothing visible happens, which is most days. It means holding steady against every voice that asks why it is taking so long.

Some work can only be done this way. A grove, a good name in a small town, a brand people trust without checking, a skill practised until it looks easy. None of them can be hurried, and every attempt to hurry them shows.

The farmer is not behind. He has simply agreed to work at the speed of the thing he is making, instead of the speed of everything around it.

Racing the clock is easy; everyone is doing it. Deciding to keep pace with time on purpose, and to keep deciding it, is the rarer discipline.