There I was in the midst of a beautiful park setting . . . quiet, birds busily making a life for themselves and perhaps for their young, trees rustling gently in the breeze and a sense of peace that only nature can create. Yet the more I listened the more I heard, the more significant became the insignificant and the more I saw what I don't normally see.
In my daily life this is not a world of which I am a regular part. Life for me is the concrete jungle of artificiality, of changing technology, of hurrying people and, to quote the Australian poet Banjo Paterson, 'the ceaseless tramp of feet'.
Yet I was being inexorably drawn into this quiet purposefulness going on around me. Each part of this fascinating flora and fauna jigsaw had a part to play in creating a wonderfully colourful natural ecology, supporting each other and working as one. I was almost forcibly reminded that I am a part of nature, not a foreigner or an interloper, that I have a part to play in sustaining, nurturing and harmonizing this symphony of life.
I was surrounded by an aura of family . . . mother nature calling me home, welcoming me without judgment, putting loving arms around me, offering natural peace of mind, resilience to cope with the winds and storms of life, re-instilling in me a sense of compassion and understanding, even when she knew I have not always been loyal to her.
The peace of nature brought me back to the person I was born to be, endowed with a unique mix of natural talents, passions and potential intended by mother nature, or God or whomever. A journey back in time, unearthing the me I had once loved to be, desires left behind years ago . . . unfinished, undeveloped and unsatisfied. Tools that had been given me to make my contribution to the natural ecology of human achievement lay in the dust, unused.
Yet the promise that only nature can bestow meant that these tools, these talents, these passions, these desires were not dead, but merely buried, dormant. Like green shoots rising from the ashes of a fire, they needed simply the gentle rains of new human interest and re-kindling of old passions to sprout, grow strong, flourish and blossom.
Take time out to go back to nature, to your roots and your favourite habitats. Revisit, unearth and rekindle your dormant passions and take your natural and rightful place in the ecology of human progress, development and achievement.
As featured in A Gift of Inspiration's first InspirEmail for 2014
