By now we all know nature benefits us but why?
You will find 1000’s of articles on how nature benefits us. The positive impact it has on our well-being - our mind, our body, our emotions, our thoughts and even our social interactions. Articles and research around this became especially popular the last couple of years when people didn’t have any other place to go other than nature.
Couldn’t help but think about times when people go through really tough times and find themselves praying to a higher being that they're not even sure they believe in….yet they find comfort that they can’t explain and so they do it.
Nature seems to have that similar unexplainable comfort as well doesn’t it?
Makes you feel like you just got a big warm hug, clears your mind, makes you take that deep breath, makes you feel connected to “something” as you observe its imperfect perfection.
So why do most articles and studies avoid addressing and diving into the “WHY?” Is there no explanation or is this another one of life’s deeper universal truths that science is still just struggling to explain… like the existence of the soul?
I believe that some of the unexplainable things in life is where the really really good things in life exist: the soul, that place you go to when you meditate, that connection you feel with certain people, that feeling you have when you are in nature.
These things above aren’t a dime a dozen. You can’t buy any of that in bulk at Costco. It’s not easy to achieve. When you meditate you don’t always reach “that” place. When you meet people you don’t always feel “that” connection. Even if you try, sometimes you don’t feel connected to your soul.
I can’t help but think that being able to explain the “how” and “why” around anything minimizes the depth of it, the power of it, the impact of it. It becomes just another thing that we humans have figured out. That’s why some things in the universe and nature are and will remain unexplainable.
We are connected to others, the world, the universe, nature more than we know and realize. Some feel that connection greater than others and some may even not even believe that it exists.
I think how deeply we feel connected to nature is very telling of how we are feeling on the inside. I remember when I first started meditating, I felt more connected to myself than I ever had in my life and that was the same time that I felt a deeper connection to nature than I ever had in my life. I always was drawn to nature but I didn’t feel it in the depths of my soul l in the past the way I did when I was deeply connected to myself.
Just like meditation, once you “feel” it deeply within you and go to “that” place once, you never forget it. There is always a string connecting you back to that place. You may not always feel it as clearly but it’s there. In the same way, my connection to nature remains but I see how it changes as my connection to myself changes.
This is when I realized that nature is here to help us see parts of ourselves that we have forgotten.
Nature exists so we can see its beauty, resilience, wonder, confidence, perfect imperfections, purity and remind us of our own.
The same feeling we feel when we listen to that song, read that post, read that book, hear those words from a friend that reminds us of who we truly are deep down. Nature just does it without any words.
There is that purity that you see in the eyes of a newborn that never leaves us as we grow up but the world, society, people around us, external temptations & attractions makes us forget. It creates layers around that part of us, and we sometimes forget its even there.
So when anything that reminds us of that part of us, like nature, we feel so so so drawn to it because it is a part of us we know we need to move closer to and we need to rediscover.
It’s hard not to forget this part of us as we “live” life but the more we talk about it, the more we let ourselves feel it through things like stillness, nature, connection….the closer the distance between us and that part of us.