Posting this #dailyconnectionwithnautre from yesterday (day70) as we had no signal. Today I hit a wall. Metaphorically speaking. I spent the whole morning hiding in a cafe working away from nature (admittedly it was work that needed doing). And then in the afternoon I hid in the van away from nature. We did walk the dogs through some beautiful Alder trees and I thought to return later alone but couldn’t find the energy. I realise how much of my life has been about disconnecting from my surroundings and how easy it is to slip into that. It’s kind of my default setting, which is why I wanted to keep up this daily connection in order to have a creative prompt for engagement. Maybe the realisation is dawning that my creative energy channels into the things I know are lacking. When our kids were younger and living at home all my work had a huge community focus because, looking back now, I can see that I had a deep need for those things around me. I wrote a poem ‘Dharma’ while in India, and in it is this line inspired by a similar line in the Bhagavad Gita “create in order to radically transform your life / not to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of yourself, or others”.
I’d decided that today I wouldn’t bother with a daily connection (for the first time in 70 days ?), but at 8pm I found myself staring out the back van window at this wall, thinking these thoughts. I studied the thriving moss all over it, and realised that today I might have felt like the mind was a brick wall but nature has helped me to see all the small, insignificant things I did throughout the day that strengthened our connection, so that now, instead of seeing the wall as a hurdle that stopped me dead in my tracks, I can change my perspective and view this state of mind as a beautiful moss-covered wall that makes me slow down and take note of the tiny movements, celebrate the subtle things.
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