“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains.”
- Walt Whitman
If you have ever experienced adversity, and if you have been alive long enough you have, you know that when it comes knocking (sometimes pounding) on your door, many things you deemed important fall away. Work, even if you love it, loses a bit of its luster. The news of what’s happening in the greater world seems somehow less relevant or as personal. Relationships reveal themselves more meaningfully. Our primary concern becomes physical survival or well-being, and practical utility, like eating and sleeping. We rely on the fundamentals of nature to get us through the day.
When you remember times of being in a state of awe, balance and beauty, think about what made you feel that way and where you stood when you experienced that state. What were the circumstances that produced that profound aesthetic arrest, that allowed you to be more open and available to the allure of beauty? I would bet that nature, in whatever form moves you, played a part. When I travel, there is a mystique about a place- its newness and novelty inspires, educates and entertains, but what I find most enduring is the experience of how I feel. It is usually influenced by nature in some form The waves, the water, the land, the light.
Nature has the power to recalibrate us in subtle or profound ways. Its radiance reminds us that our self importance is not that important after all. Nature shifts our illusion of control, or our delusion of significance, in one swallowed breath. It restores our imbalance without asking for any accolades or monetary compensation in return. It gives us back our humanness. It can quietly, or violently, recenter and reframe our state of being. It shows us that life is indeed a circle, an ecosystem of which we are not the center, and ultimately, from a place of where we must return.
Nature reminds us not to take anything for granted. To appreciate the seasons as they come and go. Like the fragrance and flavor of just picked strawberries. The divinely delicious kind that are still warm from the sun, that barely last a few days, but don’t stand a chance anyway. One bite and you know they are to be savored in this moment, with a reverence that only few things like nature can elicit.
Nature reflects back our own fleeting nature. Our tenderness. Our resilience. Our impermanence. Do not squander the opportunity, the responsibility, to care for her, for yourself.
Let this Sunday be a practice in noticing nature. Eat something seasonal ever so slowly, and with appreciation. Stand outside long enough to bask in the warmth of the sun and the vastness of the sky. Feel the solidness of earth and the soft gentleness of a grassy patch. Notice the sing song of bird sounds awaken you to the day.
Let the beauty of nature interrupt you in the best way.
xAlisa
Photo credit: Our Human Nature, Alisa Barry
Simply beautiful meditation, thank you!