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Hmmm...Nature.
Beautiful, ecstatic, healing.
When we think of nature what comes to mind?
Is it the serene scenes of a forest after a gentle rain? A coral reef teaming with colour? Perhaps it's the meadow alive with flowers and bees buzzing away in your heart.
I think of all those and more. Nature feeds and heals us in ways that words will never be able to convey, but Nature is not just these things. Nature includes people.
Humanity, individual people, are fascinating. All so very different yet so very much the same.
There isn't a day that goes by that I don't learn something new about someone. Maybe I have met someone new. More often than not I learn and see something about someone I have known for a while. Usually it's something I hadn't been aware of before.
A glimmer into how they look at things, how they process. Sometimes it is because they are transforming in their lives, usually it is because I am growing in mine.
As many different people there are on this planet is the many different views, processes, Aha's, and complexities there are. Absolutely no 2 people think and feel exactly the same. Similar maybe, but never the same.
WOW!
I find the more I allow myself to be more open, more of an observer, the more I am able to widen my views and the better I am to see people clearer, to hear what is being said between the words.
We really are no different than the community of trees, birds, animals. We find strength together. On one side we, together, like a colony of ants, can achieve greatness when we work together. Building up our homes and providing our nourishment.
That is great, but many of us relish in independence. We are not looking for conformity in a community. We are not ants. Unfortunately we say we cherish diversity, however the wolf that leaves the pack is often ridiculed and cut out altogether. Left to fend for itself.
When I observe people one thing I often pick up is how we want to be part of a community, but we want to feel free to express ourselves too. We feel pressure, however to conform. Pressure from ourselves as much as from a community we think we are in.
The fear of being ridiculed and shut out keeps us from flowering. What we don't like to see is how in turn we do that very thing to others who are trying to bloom.
Chances are it is fear, comfort comes in hiding within a crowd.
Fear. Fear of not being good enough, smart enough, individual enough.
Humans. The only animal in nature that I can think of that is fear based.
Fascinating!
There are times I conform to the fear and choose not to speak my truth as I see it so I don't have to face the ridicule, the side ways glances, the sarcastic questions. More and more however I find I am not concerned with those fears anymore, because in the end they are simply how I see things. Nothing else.
I look out into nature and see occasional trees out there on their own. Braving the elements.
Forests are marvelous, but the thing that will always grab my attention is the tree outside of the tree line. The flower that sprouted in the concrete.
The more I observe the actions and reactions of people the more I am seeing and hearing a shift. A movement towards community that is not conformity based, but individual based. Slowly these lone trees are growing together with diversity and flourishing in a way that no other fear based community can achieve.
Like the forest, full of different species, different shades of green and brown. All communing in their own way and achieving a quiet strength and endurance.
There is still the spaces that are witheringly close and restricting, but nature is always changing and adapting, and this communal change will, IS, taking hold.
And to me this is nature at its finest. Symbiosis in action. This makes me feel so infinitely large and so infinitesimally small all at the same time.
This is where I focus my attention. Attention to the communal no matter the shape, colour, breed, species or name we give it. Attention to the love that is everywhere in nature. In us. Because we are nature too.
One Earth.
