Nature and Healing

Although I am not fond of camping when it is really warm, I will say that I really enjoyed the proximity to nature, this past week. It was a poignant reminder of just how healing nature is... at least for me.

Doesn't take much for my perspective to be shifted... just one day back in front of the computer, trying to catch up with emails and the business world, and I find myself voluntarily drifting towards going outside to do yard work instead!

I don't think most humans are designed to be cooped up inside, giving their lives over to electronic screens. I acknowledge that it's my life because that's the world we seem to have created, but it strikes me as less than ideal.

While at the festival, I had several long discussions with people about the state of our world, and I thought back to my earlier life in the IT industry, and how we were often discussing whether we were designing to have technology that genuinely was adapting to human needs... or were we creating technology with the expectation that humans adapt their lives to fit the technology?

Could be we try to tell ourselves otherwise, but I have to wonder whether people confuse the stream of Instagram likes and the attendant dopamine hits with actual well-being. Nature is a lot less fleeting than social media feedback.

I write these words - ironically from my phone - while taking breaks in my yard work, which is mostly mowing our ever-shrinking patch of lawn. I say "shrinking", as we continue to convert more and more meaningless grass to space in which we can grow food... or at least native flowering plants that don't have to be mowed.

The interesting thing about that is that my head feels a lot clearer when I sit outside on a break, than when I sit in front of the screen, pondering that old question: "what am I going to write about?"

Don't misunderstand, I think our modern technology can bring us many marvels, and I use (and depend on) it all the time!

But sometimes I can't help but feel that we are becoming disconnected from the natural world and the healing it offers. Actually sitting among the tall trees of a patch of old growth forest is quite different from merely looking at a photo of it, and imagining yourself there.

So, if there was a takeaway from this excursion, it would be that I need to make more of a point of spending time in nature... and perhaps — with that — rediscovering a way to "make a living" that more substantially involves nature.

Not sure what that entails at this point... but certainly something to be looking into.

Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I managed to once before (with the sea glass and beachcombing business) so maybe I can again...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Friday!

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Created at 2024-07-26 01:40 PDT
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