Nature: our number one ally
🎉 🎊🥂Today is World Rewilding Day (and World Happiness Day, too!) Up for a slightly unusual read about nature and the nature pyramid and Taoism and Lao Tzu and Ringo Starr and ... rocks?!
Do you ever feel that sometimes it’s all getting to be a bit too much? Do you ever long for a place where the world around you moves at a different pace, where things slow down, where you can breathe, where there’s time ... we all know that feeling, right?
Stress. Rush. Expectations. Responsibilities. Doubt. We do what we can. We aim to give our best and be at our best. We don’t want to let anyone down, not our loved ones, not our teams, not our employer - and not ourselves! So we cram it all in. We take yoga classes and mindfulness lessons. We exercise, we run, we bike. Healthy mind in a healthy body and all that.
The demands of the world on our daily lives are very real. But we can and should always strive for better balance, for a steadier center, for more calm and contentment. Nature can gives us that - if we let it.
Spending quality time in nature
Nature works wonders for us and yet … how often do we spend time - quality time - in nature? And I’m not talking about the aforementioned running and biking. If that’s what you do, that’s nice and there are the obvious benefits - but with those activities, nature’s a side effect. When people we go forest bathing, it is about being there, not about running or pedaling through those woods. For nature to be our main event, for it to be able to give us what we need - we need to give it time - quality time - in return.
I’m a big fan of the idea of Nature Pyramid. I’m convinced that, if it were a norm for families and schools and governments everywhere, we’d all be far, far better off. Humanity would by physically and mentally far healthier - if we made it a core of our daily lives to engage with nature, to be out there for a bit. If we’d all experience more nature, we’d understand better, we’d care more, we’d want to protect and restore … and we’d feel ourselves breathe deeply, grow calmer, steadier. Calm as a rock.
The Nature Pyramid took the idea from the well-known Food Pyramid concept. It highlights foundational needs at the bottom all the way to the foods to be used sparingly at the top. In the case of the Nature Pyramid, it suggests a foundational engagement with nature in the neighborhood on a daily basis - you know, take a moment, a minute, an hour. Where I don’t buy into the food pyramid concept is where it advocates for a regional/national/international immersion. I think what matters, first and foremost, is quality time.
Quality time requires no funds for travel, no extensive planning, no supply purchases. I can, but it doesn’t have to. Quality time simply requires an honest giving of time … and that is, admittedly, far from easy in a world where it sometimes may feel that everything and everyone wants and needs our attention. That’s a fallacy, of course - but a powerful one. The giving of time, fully, isn’t easy, I know. But when we do, and whether that’s with a partner, or to play with kids, or with ourselves, then the magic happens.
The man on the water buffalo
Around two and a half thousand years ago, a man left court. He is said to have been disillusioned with increasing corruption of officials. Trying to leave without being recognized, he dressed himself as a farmer and rode a water buffalo all the way to the border of the empire. The border guard recognized him nonetheless and asked the learned man to write down his wisdom. According to legend, Lao Tzu obliged and what he wrote down was the Tao Te Ching.
That’s just legend, of course. Today it is believed that the book is a compendium containing the thoughts of many. The National Geographic suggests the following to explain Taoism: “Taoism holds that humans and animals should live in balance with the Tao, or the universe.” It’s hard not shake your head and sigh with dismay, and wonder how we could have possibly gone so wrong over the course of the past few thousand years. But anyway, now you understand why I detoured into the life and times of Lao Tzu … balance is at the core. Balance is what we find - can find - in nature.
Lao Tzu is supposed to have said:
What a thing of beauty … right? It is what those who meditate experience, the beauty and the simplicity of the absolute now. By the way, I once heard that, as long as you try to meditate, you don’t meditate. Until that mind is still, even years of staring at a wall won’t get you there. Is it focus? Is it just being there? Is it the “zone”? Is it letting go, or losing yourself (your self) in that moment that is instant as well as eternity? Discover it for yourself. What I can tell you is this: When I am in nature, not talking, not thinking … I’m there.
Take the time to smell those roses
The Tao Te Ching’s Wu wei has many definitions, such as “not doing anything”, “not forcing”, “not acting” in the theatrical sense, “creating nothingness”, “acting spontaneously”, and “flowing with the moment”. The practice of Wu wei can be thought of as inaction, but also as effortless action. That, effortless action, is something worth aiming for.
I think the balance at the core of Taoism can be found in the practice of Wu wei. This may sound a bit glib now, but I’m a huge fan of doing nothing, of procrastination, even of boredom. I love it. Mind you, I also love doing a great many things. It’s just that it’s not the one or the other. Our society has led us to believe that, the moment we’re not in the process of “achieving something”, we’re lazy. Well, here’s to more laziness! I find my best thoughts, my most creative ideas, in those moments of supposed nothingness.
At this point, allow me invite you to spend a bit of time with Ringo Starr (three minutes and twelve seconds, to be exact). It’s time you’ll never get back, sure. You might have done something with that time. And you may realize that you did do something with that time. Hopefully, you smiled. Hopefully, you relaxed. Hopefully, you forgot about the demands of the world for three minutes and twelve seconds. And hey, maybe a certain message was sung so much that you’ll actually start doing it on daily basis!
Going with the flow … of a rock
I’m a big fan of going with the flow, of taking things as they come. I’ve always liked the idea that good things happen to those who don’t wait for them to happen, who don’t obsess over them. You just flow with the river of life, and things - sometimes good things - happen. With our big brains, we most often cannot help but overthink everything. While those big brains have surely achieved a great deal for our species - they’ve also often proven to be more bane than boon.
So, don’t overthink it. Step out into nature. Smell a rose. Go forest walking. Or just sit down in the grass and observe everything and observe nothing. Insects come and go. A butterfly may sit on your knee for a while - or a wasp. Makes you feel uncomfortable? Gently invite it to move on. Feel the sun on your skin. Or the rain drops. Everything flows. Everything comes and everything goes - even rocks - but they do it with a calm that is something to truly behold.
I’ve always had a love of rocks and I know that many, like me, have rocks in their gardens, on their shelves and often we even carry them in our pockets (pebble-sized, hopefully!). Rocks have been important to humanity from long before Stone Henge and far beyond Gong Shi spirit stones. While I’m in agreement that we need ever more trees, I’d also suggest that, for our mental health, we shouldn’t discount the importance of rocks.
One might consider rocks to be inanimate. But flow through time they do, just like everything else. A bit of Lewisian gneiss will have started out deep underground many million years ago, going from igneous to metamorphic. Eventually it rose to the surface and became part of Scotland’s Atlantic coast. Then a shift, an earthquake, whatever. It split from the main and, millions of years later, thanks to glacier and river action, may be found all the way in the south of England. Everything flows.
Rocks, maybe more so than anything else in nature, invite us into their calm. Our eyes don’t see them move, their timescale is beyond our grasp. They’re just there. Our kind gets distracted easily. Squirrel! Maybe that’s why rocks became such powerful symbols. Maybe, when contemplating a rock, we can become like that rock. Not immovable, not inanimate, not the Western “steady as a rock” - just the opposite. We’ll experience Wu wei, that effortless action, and in that supreme calm feel ourselves flowing in harmony with nature.
Cheers,
PS: That ended up getting pretty philosophical! You know what? Just remember Ringo Starr, and whether you’ll choose a rose or a tree or a rock - make a daily habit of leaving those four walls to get out into nature - and don’t overthink it!
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