It’s Only Natural
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir
It’s as universal as the defiance of the terrible twos.
I’m talking about the eye-rolling of your teenage children.
If you try to impress them with something you like, they will respond, “Oh, Dad.”
When our girls were still living at home, we took a family vacation to the Grand Canyon.
As I parked the car, I prepared myself for, “So what’s the big deal? It’s just a big hole in the ground.”
Instead, I heard, “Wow!”
There was something undeniably majestic about that hole in the ground.
Nature is filled with majesty, beauty, and power.
I enjoy majestic skyscrapers, stunning sculptures, and engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam.
But we were designed to be in nature.
Sometimes nature can be harsh, violent even.
And so, we build homes to protect ourselves.
But we have effectively isolated ourselves from nature.
Afterall, there are spiders, snakes, and tics out there.
And it’s so dirty. Much of it is dirt.
We retreat into our sanitized spaces with their room-temperature climates.
And we convert more and more of our real estate into its “highest and best use.”
It’s a wonder that there’s any nature left.
Fortunately, there were people like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt.
But you don’t need to travel to a National Park to experience the healing properties of nature.
Even the biggest cities have pockets of the natural world in parks and other larger preserved areas.
Many streets are lined with trees. But we are sequestered in our cars and buses.
We just need to get out of our material comfort zones.
Even if it’s only for a 15-minute walk.
Even if the weather is not ideal.
Especially if the weather is not ideal.
We were designed for challenging environments.
But we become uncomfortable in our engineered habitats if the temperature fluctuates by a couple of degrees.
A more compelling reason to get out into nature is that it makes us healthier, physically and mentally.
Don’t wait until you “have time.”
When has that ever worked?
Have you ever gotten a notification, “I’m pleased to announce that you’ve been awarded an additional 15 minutes for the next three days”?
We all have the same 1,440 minutes today.
Spend some of those minutes on yourself in your natural environment.
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